#here is a crop from one of the early pages

[tamorii]

Hello folks !! My apologies for the radio silence, I've been working very hard on a comic for a magical girl anthology! My comic will feature my ancient OC Kameko as an adult in her late twenties, I'm having a blast working on this :) ✨

[the-fandom-is-now-my-life]

The creator had a:

sea streaked child

WC:800

Cw: reader is said to breastfeed but isn't written doing so

Checking the blinds to make sure they were clean, remaking the ruffles so they are even.

Furina had spent her entire morning jittery walking everywhere in the palais mermonia.

Now across the room she is digging in between the blue roses hiding any less than stellar bloom under one of its prettier sisters.

Changing the tea set on the table in the middle of the room, cerulean blue, cobalt blue and sky blue swapping places faster than Neuvillette can pay any mind to.

She sighs, looking defeated at the sets and almost begging them to tell her which one is supposed to be best yet for one second the teapots looked like mocking faces. Throwing herself on a loveseat the room starts to feel smaller and she isn't even totally sure what tea to serve.

“Breath” neuvillette says from the desk, ever since he took over the leading role in Fontaine he spent more time between pages of legal documents, if that is even possible “they are arriving for a simple chat to check on the general management of the region”

“How do you even expect me to be calm when they themselves asked for my attendance for this meeting!” she sits up wobbly, the soft swirling getting worse “I can't even remember what cake you told me they liked… this is going to be a mess”

“Their grace has quite the sweet tooth, as long as what you planned doesn't have coffee it's going to be alright”

“Why no coffee?”

“miss furina… they gave birth a few days ago, it’s disadvised to breastfeed and have caffeinated drinks” seeing her nod and her little ahoge bobbing along he feels the need to confirm “that not only includes coffee and variations but also most teas” and with that she jumps to her feet, quickly excusing herself to make some changes.

“That child…” he sighs as he reviews the documents he wanted to show you and a rough overview, his head resting against his hand and a finger between his teeth. Feeling the door whining softly he laughs from the bottom of his throat “back soon early?”

And as his heart skipped a beat as you spoke “Oh, my, I know I am 30 minutes early but I thought you would like to meet me particularly” you walk deeper inside the room, past the meticulously fixed flowers that you wouldn't have noticed the mistakes on and past the three teapots on the table, each a slightly different shade of blue. Now standing besides neuvillette and facing the documents he just noticed the bundle of white cloth you held onto.

“Did the crops get better with the method I recommended? It left me worried when I left”

“The production got better, if you want to check the report is here” he offers the three papers stuck together by a metal clip when he notices that doing it with a single hand might be hard “if I might help you” he positions his arms to grab the baby and you let her between his arms

“Let's hope she stays asleep, she is such a colicky baby” you whisper but as soon as you finish the sentence she opens her eyes and starts wailing “my goodness…” you sigh deeply.

“Let me take care of it, just focus on that” he stands up and tries to mimic what he saw parents do with their small children whenever something upsetting might come up during the trials and small children would cry.

He grabs her neck and head with one hand and her legs with another, cradling her like you. As he was swaying softly the blanket covering her hair slid down to show pointy ears and softly cartilage mixing on her thin white hair.

“Is she…” but is soon shushed by you, pointing at the door and then to your ears, the message very clear ‘someone might be listening’ but he keeps his eyes glued to you only to catch you mouthing a soundless yes. His hands cradle her head onto his neck, soft blue cartilage sneaking past his fingers.

Now soothed, you two find comfort on the soft sound of passing the pages and Cordelia's breathing, the baby's name he would later find out.

“NEUVI I managed to get a cheesecake and fontas did i save this?!” Furina pushes past the door, holding a full size strawberry cheesecake and hugging three fontas against her chest but seeing you head on thinking you weren't on Fontaine yet “HIYY”

The screech caused Cornelia to get startled and start wailing “Miss Furina.” neuvillette says sternly, almost like a father telling off his daughter. But the only thing it caused was for her to see him hugging a baby suspiciously similar to him which didn't take her long to join the dots.

“OOAH!”

“Furina please stop scaring my daughter!”

[allywthsr]

24HRS WITH VOGUE | (l.norris)

summary: Lando and Y/N are doing a follow us around with vogue during the summer break, and show what their day looks like

wordcount: 5.8k words

pairing: landonorris x singer!femreader

warnings: allusion to smut, nothing graphic, rage at mario kart

notes: my favorite one I‘ve written so far!!! Please comment your thoughts!

When you opened the door after hearing a few knocks, you were faced with a big camera.

”Hello Vogue, my name is Y/N Y/L/N and this is my and Lando Norris‘ daily routine during the summer break. Welcome to our Monaco home.“

You smiled at the camera and led it to your bedroom, where a sleepy Lando was laying. After sitting on your side of the bed you began talking.

”This is where our mornings begin, obviously. We like to sleep in, depending on our plans for the day, and cuddle, check our phones, and talk nonsense for hours.“ ”Or do things we won’t name here“, Lando added, smirking while you turned around, shaking your head with a smile, where you were met with his beautiful face.

”Anyway, we start our mornings here, just chill and you know, enjoy the peace we have during the mornings.“

The cameraman pressed the recording button to stop the recording and said: ”Can we get a few beauty shots of you guys cuddling and just being on your phones? So we can add that over the talking?“

You guys both nodded and Lando opened his arms so you could lay down, closing them around you once you did. You settled on his chest, laying your head under his‘ and taking his scent in. Cuddling with Lando was the best thing ever, especially in the mornings after you’ve just woken up. You closed your eyes and the camera made a little beep sound, signaling you that it was recording again. For a few seconds, you both were quiet acting like you had just woken up and cuddled, it was kind of weird having you filmed while doing something that was intimate, but you and Lando recently got engaged and everyone wanted to have their piece of cake. You thought doing one big video would keep them fed, so you could enjoy the summer break. Now the cameramen spoke up: ”Can you change position maybe take your phones and just pretend to check it?“

So you took your phones and scrolled on them, pretending to see the newest gossip that happened over the night. When you saw a funny meme on your Instagram page pop up, you let out a laugh, showing Lando, who started to giggle in his high-pitched voice.

”Okay guys, I think I have it, let’s keep going with your routine.“

You got out of bed and walked to the blinds that were shut.

”The first thing I do is open the blinds, I just do it very dramatically, because they‘re floor to ceiling ones and I like to have my moment in the morning“, you let out a laugh, opening them.

”As you can see, I‘m still wearing my Pyjamas, well, a shorts and a T-shirt from Lando, so the first thing I do is change or pick out my clothes for the day if I need to shower, but I already did it yesterday. So I‘m gonna change and you’re gonna leave me alone for a minute“, you pointed at the camera smiling.

In reality, he didn’t leave the room, but you did. Changing in the ensuite bathroom that was connected to the bedroom. When you came back, dressed in your shorts and a crop top, you stood in the same spot where you had the last shot, beginning to talk.

”Alright, I‘m changed. Someone is not“, you took a glance in Lando’s direction, who was still on his phone.

”He always tells everyone he‘s an early bird but he hates getting up. So I drag him out of bed.“

You took his ankle and pulled on it, trying to pull him out of bed. All you could hear was an unsatisfied sound coming from Lando, you let out a chuckle.

”Come on baby, you need to go to your training session.“

”Nooo, safe me“, he dramatically fell out of bed laying on the floor pretending to sleep again.

”He‘s always dramatic, I‘m headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth and do my skincare routine, he‘ll follow eventually.“

The next scene was in the bathroom with Lando standing next to you. He was shirtless and only in sweatpants, you almost started drooling over how good he looked, and he was yours, all yours. Thank god.

”Alright, we brush our teeth before we do anything else.“

Lando and you like to make fun of each other during mornings like this, pushing the other constantly or tickling on the hip. You squeezed the toothpaste on Lando’s and on your brush and put it in your mouth, brushing your teeth. The bathroom had his‘ and her‘s sink, yours being littered with products you claimed you needed every day. Lando always scoffed while trying to prevent an argument that water does the same as your products. Pulling out your phone, you took a picture of Lando and you and sent it to the family group chat, as you always do. Because you both moved out of your parent's home and even out of your home country, your parents called even more, missing you both. You promised them to send a message at least once a day, so you took a picture most mornings to send it their way. Saying good morning and asking how they were. Putting your phone next to your sink again.

You stood behind your sink and Lando on his‘, your elbow always touching his arm as you moved it a lot. ”Can you stop doing that? It’s annoying“, Lando told you regarding the touching, but you barely understood him with the foam that started to form in his mouth due to the brushing of his teeth. Wanting to annoy him extra, you pushed your arm fully against his and he landed on the wall with a stumble.

When he stood next to you again, he put his toothbrush under the water and before he rinsed his face, he pressed a kiss on your cheeks with his foamy mouth. You pulled a disgusted face and spit out the foam in the sink and washed your face.

”That’s where I am finished, I just need water and not all the products Y/N uses, my face is spotless without all of them. Follow me for more beauty recommendations or whatever they say.“ He went into the bedroom to change into his clothes for the day, consisting of a pair of shorts and a T-shirt he found in his closet.

”My skin needs all of these products because somehow men have better everything than women. Better skin, silkier hair, lashes that are perfect and whatnot. But yeah, that’s where we part ways, I continue with my skincare and Land-“ ”I mostly prepare breakfast for us, so follow me if you wanna see what that looks like.“

The cameramen set up a camera to record your routine while he followed Lando into the kitchen.

”So yeah, I begin with putting on this hairband“, you picked up your favorite hairband and put it around your head.

”I start with this cleanser“, you showed your favorite cleanser into the camera, ”I just wash my face with it, cleaning the dirt off my face that‘s on there after removing my makeup from yesterday and the dirt from the night“, you applied it with your hands and rubbed your face nicely to get everything off. Washing it off with lukewarm water, you took the next product.

”Then depending on what my skin needs, I have this pore minimizer that I love“, you took some on your fingers and gently massaged it on your T-zone, again washing it off afterward.

”Sometimes I get very dry skin like today, where I love to use a peeling. I love this one because it just does the job, isn’t super expensive, and smells like an Angel“, just as you wanted to show it to the lenses you heard Lando from the door.

”So it smells like you?“, you turned around looking at him.

”I love you“, you whispered to him.

”Lando sometimes likes to join me during this, he watches me a lot or even lets me apply some masks or whatever, but he would never admit it in front of the camera“, you laughed and touched his face with your hand, guided it to yours and pressed a quick kiss on his lips.

”I would never do this beauty thing, my skin is perfect without it.“ With a wink to the camera, he turned around again, probably going into the kitchen.

”Anyway, I love this peeling so much“, you applied it on your face and washed it off again after massaging it gently.

”Next I use a mask, I have a few that I love, but today I chose this one“, holding it to the camera, ”I apply it with this brush and then leave it on for about 15 minutes. I also have to say that I don’t do this every day, I only use the peeling and the mask once or twice a week so I don’t overdo my skincare. Too much can also be harmful. Let’s see what Lando is doing.“

//////////////////////meanwhile at Lando///////////////////////

”Yeah alright, welcome to our kitchen. My breakfast is mostly premade by my coach Jon, but sometimes, like during the summer break, I get to choose my own breakfast. Really exciting stuff. But because I‘m still a high-performance athlete, I need to watch out for my carbs and whatnot.

For me, it’s just a toasty with avocado and some chicken breast filet. And Y/N likes toasties as well with her favorite topping, but she also sometimes just eats a bowl of cereal depending on her mood. So I just place two toasties in the toaster“, he did like he said and pressed the button for it to start baking.

He cut up the avocado and took the chicken breast fillet out of its packaging while he waited for the toasty to finish. In between he made a trip to the en-suite bathroom, annoying you in the process.

After you came into the kitchen with your mask on your face it was time to eat. You all sat down on the table and chatted while eating, the camera was turned off and Lando had also prepared a breakfast for the cameraman.

When you finished eating it was time to record again, so he got up and pressed play.

”Breakfast was delicious and before you think that Lando can all of a sudden cook, it’s just an illusion. He puts the toasty on the toaster and I forbid him to press anything else on it except the toasting button because he‘d change the setting and would burn everything. I showed him hundreds of times how to cut an Avocado, literally hundreds, I even recorded a video once when I was away and he called me because he didn’t know how to. And everyone can take a piece of chicken breast fillet out of the package, so he ain’t no chef guys“, you cheekily smiled at him while he mumbled a: ”Can you stop exposing me please?“

You pressed a kiss on his cheek and got up, speaking to the camera: ”Anyway, next we clean up, unload, and load the dishwasher. I like to do that right after so it’s not standing around on the table all day. Lando also helps with that, before anyone comes at him in the comments now. He helps quite a lot in the household, takes the trash out because I find it disgusting, helps with unloading the dishwasher, and even the small things like cleaning our mirror in the bathroom every now and then. He works very hard every day so he doesn’t have to do all the work.“

While you opened the dishwasher to load all of the dishes, Lando passed you the plates, the silverware, and the mugs you used for breakfast.

”I‘ll just go wash this mask off and apply some moisturizer and then I am done with my skincare routine.“

”Alright now I have my daily workout session with my trainer Jon, luckily we have an apartment gym in our building complex so we don’t have to travel far, only down to the basement. Y/N likes to join when she has time and motivation.“

So you three went down the stairs to the basement where you walked through the door to find a rather small gym, but it had all the needed equipment for a session that Lando needed to do.

You walked through the door and were welcomed by Jon who did his warm-up.

”This is my trainer, Jon, he tortures me every day. He is the evil guy who forbids me from eating Kinder chocolate. It’s my favorite and it hurts me every day. Anyway, we‘ll do a quick workout, today is more or less a rest day, but because I need to be in the best shape possible I train every day, just some light training today, we will start with the warm-up.“

With that Jon, Lando and you started to stretch and warm your muscles slowly, while Lando did his thing, you went onto the treadmill to get slowly to it. You weren’t a professional athlete but you were glad that you had Jon by your side as well, helping whenever you needed it. He wasn’t your trainer but always kept an eye on you to teach you when you did something wrong.

So the cameraman filmed beauty shots of you both training, doing lunges, squatting, and some light cardio. He also filmed little shots of Jon, Lando and you laughing because Lando said something funny about his training again. Whenever he had to do his neck training you couldn’t do anything else than laugh. The way his lip twitches got you crackling every time, you didn’t want to imagine how you would look like if you had to do this exercise.

You both finished this session with a plank hold, where Lando definitely won, but you liked to challenge each other.

Going back to your flat you went into the bathroom, doing a light Make-up for the day.

”I have nothing big planned today, but I still like to look a little fresh, so I’m just gonna apply some concealer, powder, contouring, blush, eyeliner, and mascara. I don’t need much time for it, it’s a routine by now.“

You put all the products on and went into the living room and sat around the dining table behind your MacBooks.

”You look absolutely beautiful, angel.“

Your heart melted and you blushed a little as always when Lando complimented you.

”We mostly take the time after a workout to check our emails, messages, and whatnot. Lando likes to go through some data while I go through new music with my producer. But, if you follow us on social media, you‘ll know that we‘re currently building a house in the UK. Since we live in Monaco, we can’t be there every day. So we FaceTime a lot with the company that builds it. We have a meeting scheduled with them in six minutes actually, where we just see the house and talk about the progress and the next steps. The shell is almost done and they can finally start building the inside. I‘m really excited, you have no idea.“

You opened your laptop and waited for the call to come. Lando got you both something to drink, him a smoothie that Jon gave him and you got your favorite drink, you thanked him with a kiss on his cheek.

”Before people say, look at them they‘re so boujee, building a house and all that. We got a piece of land from my parents as a gift. Yeah okay, that is boujee“, Lando started laughing in his high-pitched voice and then continued: ”But just don’t be a hater, we never wanted to stay in Monaco forever and so we thought that now is the perfect timing to build a house, especially with the engagement and all that. We’ve always dreamed about building our own home, how we imagine it to look like and we’re internally grateful that we can afford it. It takes some time before our dream home is built, so we have to be patient.“

When he mentioned the engagement, a big smile erupted on both of your faces. Just a month ago he went down on one knee and popped the question, you didn’t even have to think about what you would answer. Shouting out the yes after a second of processing what was happening.

The cameraman looked up, ” Tell us more of the engagement. You‘ve been together for what?“

”He‘s been nagging my ass for five years now“, you looked at Lando with a smile.

”Yeah and she‘s singing my ear off for five years, I don’t know what’s worse“, with a serious look he turned his head to the camera before a smile came across his lips.

”No but it was romantic, at least for us. We‘re both not really romantic people, we both need our separate spaces from time to time, we also don’t light a candle just because we eat dinner or something if you get what I mean.“

”Yeah and we have a spot in Monaco where we like to go when we need to relax, it’s up in the hills where you can see the whole city, I found it when I was on a morning run“, with that Lando put his hand on your thigh and slowly caressed it.

”So we went there in evening, it was beautiful weather, and we just settled on a blanket like we always do. Enjoy the peace and all that. I just wanted to relax a bit and he suddenly started to talk about how much he loves me and how happy he is that we found each other, and I just was like ’ Please stop, I want to hear the birds chirping to relax‘ but he continued and I started joking on ’how much of a simp he is telling me that’ he did ask me to ’shut up‘ at one point. So when he told me to get up, I was not having it. I just settled on the ground, and then I had to get up again, the audacity of this men guys. But no I’m kidding, when I got up he went down on one knee and boom“, after the boom you showed your hand with the ring to the camera.

”It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Exactly how I imagined it to be. But before anyone comments stuff like ’ How did you not get it when he started his speech‘, I had a suspicion but I didn’t think it would happen that day. And he tells me often how he feels about me and us, call him Simp but it’s really cute. So it was nothing new, him talking about it.“

”So when’s the wedding?“, the cameraman asked.

”We haven’t planned anything yet. With Lando’s busy schedule, it’s hard to plan a date when everyone is free. But we take our time with this, we don’t have to get married tomorrow.“

Just after you ended your sentence, your laptop started ringing, indicating that a FaceTime call was coming. You accepted it and you both were met with your architect.

”Alright“, Lando clapped his hands, ”we finished our call and normally we like to go on a walk or something like that during the afternoon. Let’s go then.“

Lando and you walked hand in hand through the streets of Monaco, being stopped by fans every few meters, but that’s the price you pay. The cameraman filmed a lot of beauty shots of Lando and you, you were super excited for when you would see the whole video.

After a walk through beautiful Monaco, you settled in a restaurant.

”Sometimes we are too lazy to cook anything and we go out to eat. This is our favorite restaurant. I try to choose something healthy from the menu, but it’s the summer break, so I get to treat myself a little. I‘m gonna go for some chicken with fries and a salad, so I can send Jon a picture of how healthy I eat.“

”And I‘m going to take number thirty nine, it’s my favorite. I always get it.“

After lunch was served, and you guys ate it was late in the afternoon.

”It’s almost 6:00 pm now and we have almost nothing left in our fridge, so we have to go food shopping.“

You guys went into the store and Lando pushed the cart, often enough putting all his weight on it and sliding through the aisles.

”We‘re going on our holiday trip in like four days, so we don’t need as much as we usually do.“

Putting in the cart normal things like fruits and vegetables, some bread, things to put on top of the bread, and some drinks.

Lando sneaked a kinder chocolate bar into the cart, looking guilty at the camera while whispering to the microphone: ”If your Jon, I‘m sorry.“

You picked a yogurt for yourself and one for Lando to enjoy during the evening. As well as some toilet paper, some kitchen rolls, and choosing a new surface cleaner.

You went to the cashier and put everything into a shopping bag you always carried around in your purse, as Lando paid with your shared card.

Walking back home, Lando carried the bag in his left hand while holding your hand with his right. Talking with you about the most random things. The walk wasn’t long, just fifteen minutes so you enjoyed the view, walking through the old streets of Monaco was one of your favorite things to do here, just looking at the architecture was beautiful. It also amazed you every time how luxurious this city is, so many luxury stores were next to each other, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, you could go on and on.

When you arrived home, you put all of your groceries away, while Lando started to unload the dishwasher you loaded this morning. Putting the plates in their place in the cupboard as well as the glasses and sorting the cutlery in the drawer.

Afterward, Lando went streaming. The camera follows your every step.

”Lando is now streaming and I like to make him a snack that he can eat while gaming. We bought some fresh fruit earlier, as you saw, and I’m just gonna cut him an apple and some watermelon. He‘s like a little kid, I swear.“

After doing so, you went to his gaming room, knocking on the door so he would hear you through his headphones. You heard a loud: ”Chat wait, Y/N knocked on the door.“

He opened it and you were met with your gorgeous boyfriend, wearing his big headphones and looking cuddly as ever.

”I cut you some fruit up.“

”You’re the best girlfriend ever“, you laughed at the statement.

You both went to his PC and he sat down with you on his lap. He took the fruit plate and showed it to the camera that was attached to his desktop.

”Look chat, Y/N made me some fruit. She gets the girlfriend of the month award!“

Looking at the chat, he realized his mistake.

”I mean fiancé, not girlfriend, you’re right chat. She’s not my girlfriend anymore.“

He smiled up at you while you turned your head around to see him, pressing a kiss on his lips.

You turned around again and read the chat.

”That’s Vogue behind us, Chat. They‘re following us throughout the day. Stay tuned it’s coming up next week. No, we‘re not filming porn, what the fuck? You‘re Chat is weird Lan.“

”I know, I know.“

”Anyway, Imma get going, I have a meeting about my tour now.“

You stood up, but not before you waved at the camera and said your goodbyes. Ruffling through his curls and pressed a kiss on top of his head, while he slapped you on your right ass cheek for everyone to see. You gasped and let out a loud: ”Lando!“, before leaving the room and closing the door again.

”Alright I just have to put our laundry in our washing machine so it can wash it. It should be ready before we go to bed, so I can put it in our dryer.“

Collecting the laundry and the dirty towels, you went into the utility room. Putting everything into the washing machine, you started the fast program and left to go into the kitchen again.

”I have a quick meeting about my tour now. I‘m going on tour in three months and it’s more planning than some would think. Right now we‘re discussing about the final visuals I want to have behind me while performing. But I‘m not showing you anything from it, it’s going to be a surprise and you should see it for the first time when you come to see me“, you winked at the camera. ”I‘ll see y‘all later!“

Finishing your meeting after an hour, you went into Lando‘s streaming room again, sitting on his lap.

”Alright Chat, this is it for today, we‘ll go and enjoy the rest of our evening and so should you.“

You both waved to the camera and you saw the goodbyes rolling in, Lando ended the stream and you went into the kitchen to prepare some dinner.

”When we already ate some actual food, we‘ll just eat some bread or bread rolls or whatever. We bought some fresh ones today while shopping, so we‘re eating that tonight. I‘m going to cut some cucumber and healthy stuff to eat with it“, you said and prepared the dinner table. Putting out the cucumber, peppers, and cherry tomatoes as well as the bread rolls and toppings for them. The cameraman shot some beauty shots of the table and then you sat around it and ate your dinner.

When you finished eating, Lando passed you the dirty dishes while you loaded them into the dishwasher, you always did this, he passed you the dishes and you loaded the washer. It became your routine and you loved how you had your routines, it was like a married couple. It showed that you worked together and how you helped the other, whatever you did.

Five years was a long time, you basically became an adult together, and you grew into the person you now are, and only because you had the other one to help.

Sitting down on your couch, you sat closely next to each other, Lando putting his hand on your thigh.

”After dinner, we just like to watch movies, watch our series, play video games, play board games whatever. Every night is different. I don’t know what we‘ll do today. Lan, what do you think?“

”Uhm, I kind of want to play Mario Kart. Are you okay with that?“

”I would love that actually.“

One of the things that Lando and you also had in common, was the love for Mario Kart. I mean everyone loved it, but Lando and you had an unhealthy obsession with it. At least that is what your friends say. You could play the game for hours, only stopping when one of the others got too aggressive. Lando had smashed multiple controllers because of it. You yelled at him for throwing blue shells or sending red shells your way whenever you were first. You hit him multiple times on wherever you could reach when he played unfair.

”But only if you play fair“, you told him. He sat up straight and looked at you with an unamused look.

”Me playing fair? What’s with you? You always distract me with ways I can’t name here, who plays unfair now?“

That was true. When things went bad you only had one strategy and it was: Distracting.

You kissed his neck, you loved his neck and so you left little kisses on them, biting playfully into it, knowing that that was one of Lando’s weaknesses. Tracing your tongue from his ear to his T-shirt collar, and then blowing air on it. Leaving him shivering with the sensation. And if that didn’t make him distracted and driving into a wall, you would do things he could never say no to.

Touching his bulge, and staring at his face. And if he was that into the game, not acting up on your touching, ignoring you to get the win, there was only one last solution.

Getting. On. Your. Knees.

You would throw away your controller and sink in front of the sofa and tug on his pants until his member was freed. Then doing unholy things to him that would definitely make him forget about the game. Mostly he would return the favor, the game long forgotten, and spending what felt like hours on making the other feel better. Sometimes he would groan and blame you afterwards, that he lost but when you reminded him what happened minutes earlier he would grin and then make some cocky remark.

But that wouldn’t happen today. Not when the camera or another human was in the room.

So you just scoffed at the camera and rolled your eyes.

He chose Koopa Troopa, his favorite, and you chose your favorite character, selecting a kart, that would make you the fastest.

”One hundred ccm? Or one hundred and fifty?“

”Let’s do one hundred and fifty, I‘m up for a challenge.“

”Uhhhhh baby, you have no idea what’s coming“, Lando yelled.

So you started with the Mario Circuit, Lando won, but only because he threw a red shell your way in the last corner, getting you right before the finish line, which he crossed with a loud giggle and pushed your shoulder to mock you.

Next up was Toad Harbour, Lando‘s favorite track, he knew it like the back of his hand and aced it, of course. You tried to sabotage him by tickling his sides but that didn’t work.

The third was Sunshine Airport, you won. Flying through the corners like a bird, drifting your way around the track.

The last one was Rainbow Road. You both groaned when the random setting chose this track.

”Whoever wins, is the winner. Rainbow Road is only a track for professionals“, Lando suggested.

You nodded and prepared yourself for the screaming that was about to happen.

Looking at the cameraman, hoping he wasn’t too disturbed by you and Lando competing in the game, knowing how competitive you both could get.

The race started and you fell down in the first corner, being pushed off by some character, you yelled at the screen. Otherwise, you made it through the first two rounds safely. On the third lap, you were in second, and Lando in first, you drove through a question block and you got a red shell. Sending it his way he screamed at you.

”Stop with this bullshit Y/N.“

You giggled and he did a backflip on the track after it hit him. Now you being in first place your heart started beating faster, now or never. You already saw the finish line but then suddenly a bomb appeared in front of you, fully driving into it. You just heard a scream from Lando, you looked at his screen and you saw that he also drove into it. And before you knew it Baby Rosalina won the game.

”NO THIS CAN NOT BE IT, FUCKING BABY ROSALINA WON THE GAME NO!“

Lando going into full rage mode and screaming at the TV while throwing the Controller next to him and crossing his arms before his chest.

”I have enough of this stupid game, I wanna watch something on Netflix.“

You looked at the camera. ”That is something that happens whenever he loses. I‘m not that much better, to be honest.“

With that, you opened Netflix and you cuddled up to him, choosing the series you started two days ago.

The cameraman filmed some beauty shots of you cuddling and then went around the flat filming beauty shots of the apartment, you were curious on how the video would turn out.

Suddenly you sat up and Lando looked at you with a big question mark on his face.

”What happened?“

”Our laundry!“

”I thought something happened, god damn Y/N.“

The camera followed you to the utility room, filming you taking out the laundry, putting it into the dryer, and starting the dryer.

”It’s late and I need to do my nightly skincare routine, it’s not as big as the morning routine but I do some things to get ready for bed.“

You went into the bathroom and explained your next steps.

”First I start with removing my makeup. I remove it with this“, you showed your favorite product into the camera, ”I just love it. I apply it and it practically melts my makeup off. Next, I use this cleanser to make sure I am fully clean in the face and then I just use a night cream or an oil to give my skin the moisture it needs. And now is when Lando normally joins me for brushing our tee-.“

And before you could end the sentence, Lando walked into the bathroom settling behind his sink just like this morning. He took his toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste on it while repeating the same on your toothbrush. Putting it in your mouth, you both started to brush your teeth. Instead of pushing the other, you leaned your head against his arm, slowly feeling the tiredness overtaking your body, sometimes doing nothing all day can be more tiring than having a big schedule. So you spit out the foam, rinsed your mouth and Lando did the same, washing his face after. You both went into the bedroom and put your Pyjamas on for the night, well, you again put on some random shorts and a T-shirt from Lando and he put on shorts as well.

Settling in bed, Lando turned on the TV.

”We normally just watch some YouTube videos until we almost fall asleep, we‘ll watch whatever pops up, mostly some sidemen videos. But now is the time where you’re gonna leave us, thank you so much Vogue for following us throughout the day and I hope you all enjoyed the video.“

You started waving toward the camera and Lando screamed out a: ”Peace!“

The cameraman ended the recording and you got out of bed. Thanking him for following you both through this day and accompanying him to the door, saying your final goodbyes, and wishing him a good night.

When you returned, Lando sat on your bed with his arms wide open, ready for a cuddle. So you took the spot and looked at the new MoreSidemen video that just came out, ending the night with the love of your life.

[soapoet]

describing the dynamic...

...a requested continuation of this post.

like & rb if it resonates ♡

01.

Shufflemancy: First day of my life by Bright Eyes

This feels like home. It is familiar and it is sweet. The two of you create an air of comfort, which draws in various orphans of the storm. Like a safe haven amidst stormy seas. A lighthouse. This has the blueprint of starting a found family. Your union echos with lots of laughter, the kind that brings tears and stomachaches. The joy here is tangible and it is imprinted in everything. Your dynamic is like an evolved version of puppy love. It's nervous, but adoring. Giddy and rosy. It feels like best friends falling in love. They know you and you know them at a deep level. The foundation upon which this relationship stands could withstand hurricanes, though there isn't much to worry about. Most issues that crop up seem a little silly, and you may laugh about them afterwards. Personal doubts and misunderstandings are the worst that can happen here, which are mostly due to the doglike loyalty and care you have for one another. Ever seen the face of a pooch when they've done something they shouldn't have? They appear so sheepish even though their mistake or mischief really isn't all that bad or serious. We often laugh at our beloved pets when they appear so apologetic because it is so often wildly out of proportion for their actual crime. The same applies to this relationship. Doubts may occasionally become bigger in your heads and cause a similar out of proportion shame or guilt or concern about how the other will react. Many inside jokes may stem from these situations, actually. Despite the occasional and shortlived whirlwind of doubt and concern about the status of the relationship, your communication is very good and open and clear. You might both simply have a hard time expressing yourselves when it comes to negative feelings and experiences, likely stemming from your upbringing. Which brings me to the point of healing. A key feature of this relationship is just that. Healing. The two of you treat each other the way you wish you had been treated growing up. As though you are raising each other's wounded inner child in a much better, loving, and attentive environment. There is a lot of validation and tenderness present. The reciprocation is beautifully balanced. When one is feeling low, the other takes on a guardian role, comforting and supporting them in various ways. Need a doctor's appointment but you're too anxious to call? Your partner gotchu. Next time they're ill you'll be making them soup and wrapping them up in a blanket. The give and take feels natural, like neither of you need to think twice about it, and best of all: nobody's keeping score.

02.

Shufflemancy: High heels by Mando Diao

Once this one gets going, it's long distance, not a sprint. Considering the delays this relationship experiences before it begins, however, the steady movement doesn't feel slow at all. And although this relationship is very spontaneous and fun, there is a balancing act at play wherein plans for the future are made early on. They want to make sure you're both on the same page and have an idea of where the relationship is headed right from the start to avoid conflicting ideas later. There are some traditional elements to this relationship because they lead a busy life professionally. Plans may be made to have you stay at home once things get serious, though they are very supportive of any business ideas you come up with or already have when you enter into the relationship. This person values ambition and drive, probably just as much as you do, and is very supportive of any endeavours you decide to pursue, and is likely to help fund or network to boost your success.

Expect frequent date nights. This person enjoys romance and works hard to keep the spark alive, so long as they don't feel smothered. When given the space and time they love to shower you with gifts and make you feel special. Travelling also figures strongly, and you may cross many destinations off your bucket list with this person. They favour quality over quantity, though, and may make it a point to spend big bucks on a resort for an extended period of time to really make the most of the destination and the time you get to spend together. It's possible the two of you eventually purchase a second home somewhere you like to visit. The two of you enjoy a rich social life as well, and may frequently entertain people in your home or at different venues. Your energy is contagious and other people are naturally drawn to the two of you because of the fun and welcoming energy created by your union. I'm not seeing much in terms of issues, mostly because the element of fun is so strong here. It feels very balanced because each of you gets to be in your favoured energy and feel appreciated for what you bring to the relationship. Very strong mutual respect. Each of you seem to succeed in life and your careers and projects better because the other is by your side. Reaching higher and farther because of the support of the other. This has an air of'us against the world', as though you are building an empire together. Your success is very new-money and modern. Flashy and extravagant, but still down-to-earth and humble in a way in which you really count your blessings and have much gratitude for what you have together and where you came from. The two of you may help or give back to your community, or donate to charity. It's possible they pay off your family's mortgage or do some other big financial gesture towards your family after the two of you commit. There is a lot of passion in this relationship. Very flirty, and there is a strong sexual attraction. The two of you make each other laugh a lot and may pull pranks on each other. Check out Destene and Brandon on youtube, because their dynamic mirrors this group a lot!

03.

Shufflemancy: Mary on a cross by Ghost

This is the one that will feel like things are too good to be true. You will want for nothing. The dynamic here is almost that of a knight and the one they have sworn to protect, or the royal and the peasant they chose for love. There is much adoration here, and it feels old-timey in a way. If you have been kissing frogs before, this one will really surprise you. They enjoy traditional courting and may look down upon the modern era of dating and the attitudes surrounding it, and don't like most of the people making them offers. They also appear to compensate for time spent apart through lavish gifts, and making sure you have everything that you need. There are a lot of calls and messages being sent back and forth, especially during their time away. They're very supportive of your studies or the projects you're working on, and will do everything in their power to create a good environment for you to do what you need to do. There is a strong possibility of them asking you to accompany them on their business travels, in an effort to help the two of you spend more quality time together. You have an energy that differs so much from what they have to deal with in their professional life, and they derive a big boost of motivation and confidence from it. It is almost as though they see you as their lucky charm.

The primary cause of friction appears to come from outside the relationship. You may frequently receive strange looks when you're together, or the way you differ somehow causes tension amongst your partner's peers. They, however, are incredibly proud of you and encourage you to speak your mind and stay true to yourself. They think you're perfect and don't want you to change, especially not through pressure from the kinds of people they find shallow or even fake. There could be instances where people try to steal your partner, but they fail horribly because of your partner's devotion to you. This can also go the other way, wherein people begin to pursue you in an attempt to steal you away from your partner, as if to spite them. You may receive invitations, offers, and gifts from people, especially ones you meet through your partner. This reveals a jealous streak in your partner which is very prevalent, but not in a toxic or controlling way. Because they have such social grace and know how to play the game, they never target you with their jealousy and dismay, but those who try to get in between. They are protective of what's theirs, but are very graceful and strategic in their methodology of solving problems. This also lends itself well to any wrinkles that need ironing in the relationship, because they don't appear to get angry and have a mentality that it's not you vs. them, but the two of you vs. the problem.

This dynamic may sometimes lead to waking up alone, but there is sure to be a lovely note left behind, or they may send flowers. They like to let you sleep in, and find you to be at your most beautiful when you're asleep because of the serene look on your face. You really help them feel at peace, which is something quite difficult for them to achieve on their own. They have trouble relaxing or doing things without it somehow boosting their qualifications or adding to their resume. You help them pick out books to read just because, watch movies regardless of their acclaim and accolades, go thrifting for the fun of it or visit the sweet little side street boutiques and unknown cafés. They really just feel like they have access to more oxygen when you're around, as though they've spent their whole life holding their breath and they can breathe easily and deeply around you.

04.

Shufflemancy: Me the machine by Imogen Heap

There is a whole lot going on here mentally. The two of you spend a lot of time talking, for hours upon hours. "Is that the sun?" can become a frequent phrase used when time slips through your fingers as you talk the night away to watch the sunrise. The two of you love to debate, especially in regards to matters you agree on, because it seems you reach the same conclusion from different angles and enjoy discussing each other's detours. They love picking your brain and value your opinions. There is a bit of a hopeless romantic in them, which may catch you off guard every time due to their cerebral nature. They might leave you notes or share songs to express their feelings. To them you are an equal, a missing puzzle piece that helps them see the bigger picture. You two are like the seeker and the explorer. They like holding hands and being close to you, but seem a little hesitant, even months into the relationship. You are certainly the more open and affectionate one, whilst they tend to be a little shy. Their awkwardness is quite charming, though, because they do try their best to show their love and support. Support plays a big role here, too, as they have a lot to teach you in various areas of life and you will grow quite a bit during this relationship. They are an excellent mentor and encourage you to chase your dreams, but are also good at holding you accountable. They can be a little blunt and clumsy with their words, but they mean well and wish for you to be the best that you can be and never sell yourself short. They really won't let anybody talk down on you, least of all you yourself. They have very high standards so any self-loating on your part feels insulting to them. They wouldn't date you if they didn't think you were incredible.

They enjoy your company and express genuine interest in your thoughts and ideas. You share many interests and engaging in them together is a big part of this relationship. You two are stronger together and can face many hardships with greater ease due to how you complete one another. Not in that you aren't whole on your own, but that your individual strengths and weaknesses balance each other out. Where you lack, they're abundant, and vice versa. It really makes for a dynamic duo, albeit one that may from the outside appear mismatched or peculiar. That does not stop you, though, and they especially have very little care for what other people think. The two of you may collaborate on various projects, or work together towards both joint and separate goals. Your minds and talents blend beautifully together, and your relationship is potent with inspiration and motivation. Tackling difficult tasks and the daily grind appears easier when you can delegate things depending on your individual strengths. The source of strife mostly stems from misunderstandings. Both of you value communication, but on occasion words are left unsaid or too much is said without prior thought and one of you gets hurt. This does not seem to ever be on purpose, just accidental slip-ups and thoughtlessness.

05.

Shufflemancy: Boys do cry by Marius Bear

Which one of you brought the gasoline? The dynamic here is hot and heavy. Passionate, as though desperation and need is causing you to crawl into each other's skin and wear each other's hearts. It can get a little crazy, fast paced and wild, in most things that you do. And you may get into quite a bit of trouble together, too. When Billie Eilish said 'I'm the powder, you're the fuse; let's add some friction' the two of you were taking notes. There is a lot of push and pull, and the relationship contains a lot of drama. Though I don't feel like that is wholly unwelcome, strangely enough. It seems beneficial for the two of you to keep each other on your toes, like you both crave some explosive feelings to feel fulfilled. This relationship really isn't for the faint of heart. But whilst others watch in horror, you make each other feel alive in this almost feral dance. They are very protective of you, and you of them. It's like you give each other scary dog privilege because nobody else can swoop in to steal a heart while the other stands on watch. You're both a little possessive, but it boils down to the deep connection you have feeling so intertwined with the very cores of your beings that losing the other would feel like losing yourself. Definitely worth checking yourselves for co-dependency to be sure it does not go overboard, but so long as you keep your individuality intact, this one is one hell of a ride. A ride or die, in fact. You are truly partners in crime and feel dangerously powerful together, like you could take over the world and overcome anything.

I won't sugar coat this: there is a lot of turmoil that the both of you conjure up. Most of the issues in this dynamic stem from the heightened emotions you are both capable of, and if either of you start wielding them as weapons it will cause even more explosive emotions. I will say, though, that this only gets physical in the make up part of the show, as the actual strife is emotional and verbal in nature. Because you care a lot for each other, neither would dare lay a hand on the other. The thought of you getting hurt by them or anyone or anything else would upset them greatly, and it's the same in reverse. You mirror each other a lot, and have much to learn from each other. Much of it will feel heavy and burdensome since you will be facing your own demons within the other person, and that's never easy. Fortunately there is a lot of gentle care here, too. Since you both feel things so strongly and have similar experiences in life, it is much easier for you to sympathise with each other and support each other. This is one of those relationships where you truly do not need to hide or be on your best behaviour, because you have both weathered storms and do not easily flinch when the thunder and lightning begin to roar, and you both provide each other shelter when needed.

06.

Shufflemancy: Light by Sleeping at last

I remember seeing a writing prompt once upon a time with the premise of seeing in greyscale until you lock eyes with your soulmate, and this has that exact energy. It really seems as though this person lead a very monotonous life until you barged in, inviting the sunshine into their life. Because in many ways they view you as the light of their life, they are very protective of you. You bring them much joy, laughter, and relaxation, all things they do very little of, at least successfully, and find themselves more able to partake in the joys of life in your presence. You are a breath of fresh air, as though someone finally opened up a window inside a stuffy office. They see stars in your eyes and they want nothing more than to preserve them, and make them shine even brighter. There is a little bit of a saviour complex here. Anything you struggle with they don an armour for to protect and to serve. Because you nurture their soul and heal their wounds with your tender love and care and expand their horizons with your sense of wonder, they feel compelled to take care of you. It feels almost familial, but not in a weird way. It is as if they want to keep your childlike wonder alive and well, and right any wrongs that come your way. They take a load off your shoulders frequently, and may especially take on all your mundane tasks and paperwork. They love your playful energy and can see that the stuffy stressors of life cage that bird in, and they want to see you soar. This is a very healing connection for both of you. You balance each other out whilst being a mentor for each other, teaching each other your strengths so that you two can feel whole and capable all in your own right. You are both willing to bend, to try new things, allow the other to show you new worlds and explore possibilities. Very likely to lead to marriage, and it would be a very happy and functional one because of the growth you inspire in one another both as individuals and together as one. It's like your relationship begins as a little sapling, slow, but once it has been given the space to grow it grows big and strong and will withstand any storm and leave behind a legacy, like your future children putting up a swing for their children on the tree you two once sowed.

[blorbocedes]

let me take you guys on a journey. one that will help you understand how annoyingly obsessive and hung up my brain can get......

so here is where our wild goose chase starts. I was going through a 2012 f1 blog's nico tag. it's actually pretty rare for early 2010s blogs to have comprehensive tagging systems so whenever I find one I try to go thru it all. and I come across this v cute nico image (cropped for posterity. payoff will be worth it promise)

here we have a picture, from 2012, and in classic 2012 fashion there is meme text on it. OP of the original pic deactivated. so I want to find the version without the meme text. pretty easy, just reverse google search right?

WRONG!

google reverse search is functionally dead and defunct and absolutely dogshit.

ok back to square one. I'm trying to sus out from whatever information I have.

the other meme watermark of f1humour.tumblr.com? deactivated.

okay 37 notes. maybe I can do something with this.

tumblr kind of breaks (?) with very old posts. so even if someone tagged it, I can't see it. ok but 14 people liked it!

of the 14 accounts only 7 actually show, including mine. so what I do is I go through 6 of those blogs, and their public archives because those accounts are all inactive for several YEARS now. and I check their blogs for April 2012.

no luck.

back to the drawing board.

the meme has a MOTORSPORT.COM watermark.

here's all the information I have: this was posted on April 24th, 2012, which means that's my upper limit on the date this could be taken. Nico got in Mercedes in 2010. So from anywhere between 2010-2012 motorsport images couldve taken this pic.

so, because I was born with excessive intelligence, I think hmmm... let me search the archives of Motorsport Images dot com. surely that is where Motorsport dot com would keep their Images.

two years of a racing driver's pictures means thousands of pictures. okay. let's start from April 2012. unfortch for keen eyed listening, April 2012 was also the Chinese Grand Prix aka Nico's first f1 win.

why is that relevant? because it means every photographer and their MOTHER took a picture of nico for his first win. over 900+ images.

while I am exhibiting extremely unemployed levels of behavior here, I don't actually have the time and brain capacity to sift through 900 images.

I go back to the original tumblr post. this time I go to the empty reblogs. there's lots!

but because there's no tags it can't help me. still I go through every one of them because you can see the blog I found the pic from @the-fastest-waffle is listed in the other reblogs even though they clearly had tags!

and I find my silver lining. from @fuckyeahf1drivers's tags

just this simple. #bahrain #lol

if this picture is from bahrain 2012 it changes everything, as in it narrows my search a shit tonne.

375 images. This means 1-15 pages and I know the exact picture I'm looking for. I feel like I'm SO close. I can't give up now. gambler mentality 💎

so I guess what. I go through all 15 goddamn pages. and I DONT FIND IT!!!!!!!!! SCREEEEEECH

now I've lost hope. if it's not from bahrain 2012 then it can be from anywhere from 2010-2012 taken by motorsport.com which is just too big a search. there isn't anything I can narrow it down with. my search is futile.

but I have one tiny little thought bugging my mind. how come motorsport images don't have the motorsport.com watermark... so I consult a fellow archivist @vegasgrandprix on the matter.

WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO ADDRESS WHY MOTORSPORT.COM AND MOTORSPORT IMAGES.COM HAVE THE SAME FONT

finally. finally

I go on motorsport.com

which is actually kind of not super user friendly interface finding their pics if you have excessive intelligence like I do. I go into this knowing if the bahrain 2012 long shot is actually NOT when that picture is from, I'm fucked.

I filter and say a prayer.

and lo and behold.

salvation.

one person's singular tag of 'bahrain 2012 lol' led me down this spiral, where if it wasn't for that bit of information this would be lost forever because finding the version of the pic without the meme text is otherwise near impossible. google reverse search is no help, and f1 drivers simply get photographed way too much. reblogs + tags with context literally are a holy grail. this is what I imagine archaeologists feel like. so if you ever want someone 12 years after you've posted something to go down finding out, tag your posts accordingly (assuming tumblr survives the next decade)

so why did I do it? why did I spend hours of my life on this? cause it's fun. it's like a mystery and it itches at my skin. many times I'm not successful which is why the times I am feels so rewarding because it feels almost like detective work, finding and refinding something, overturning evidence. and I have a brain that just functions Like This.

and now for the fruit of my labour, if you guys still want to see. the picture I spent hours to find the original version of. sitting proudly at the time of posting at 9 notes 😌😌 here's what goes behind actually finding and archiving 2010s retired f1 drivers online. click below!

👇👇👇

👆👆👆

[tadpolesinyourshoes]

more od my stardew brain rot for the masses. I present:

My headcannons after life after marriage with the SDV bachelor/ettes:

Its kinda long, sorry and I also apologize for typos or if its incoherent. I'm no writer

Harvey:

You thoughy he worried avout your health BEFORE you got together, oh boy oh boy. He's alaays asking how you feel, bringing you snacks amd water while you work the farm. He cleans you up after the mines (while he lectures you about the dangers). He likes the domestic moments. The days it rains and you stay inside together with warm cups of coffee, snuggled up in the bed. Hes a classica kind of guy. He leaves roses on the table and brings you breakfast in bed. Since hes a doctor, you're both awake early. Every morning is filled with sleepy kisses and coffee. He never leaves the house without a kiss and a 'see you later'.

Shane:

This man is ANXIOUS. Hes a bundle of self doubt and insecurity. He spends his hours thinking how great you are and how itd a matter of time until you leave him. Reassure him, please. He absolutely loves every minute you're with him. Hes acrually a surprisingly good cook. He also is so good with kids. He definitely wants kids after seeing you with Jas. Hes not big on saying how he feels, but he's working on it. Instead he helps out here and there, feeding the chickens (he actually loves doing that), cleaning the house, cooking a meal when you get home late. Little touches when you're alone. His leg agaisnt yours, his hand gently in your hair while you sleep. He loves you more than anything (except the chickens. Knoe your place.)

Elliot:

He is down SO BAD. Carries a picture of the two of you everywhere. He shows you off whenever he has the chance. Hes just so proud of his sweetheart. He cooks well, but he hates cooking so you two agree to split the chores. You're his muse ans you best believe he makes it known. He leaves you poems; post-it notes on the mirror, on a napkin on the counter, written on the bavk of th grocery list, a torn out notebook page in your coat pocket. He loves when you do his hair. If you don't know how, he teaches you. On slow days on the farm, you leave the front door open for some air and you can hear him playing piano.

Alex:

His love language is tackling you (physical touch). You walk through the door and hes hugging you, kissing your cheeks, picking you up and taking you to bed. He can't cook, but he can bake. Evelyn taught him and he treasures the skill. For every anniversary, no matter how small, he makes a treat. He loves helping you around the farm because its an excuse to walk around shirtless and flex for you. He also has a weirdly green thumb. The crops wont sprout and the season is almost over? Send Alex to water them. The next moening you have a bounty like no other.

Sam:

He has ADHD so he does that peguin pebbling thing where he finds random objects and brings them to you because 'this reminded me of you.' He can't cook. For the love of yoba don't let him cook unless you want to remodel your kitchen. He still tries to be sweet though. Hes not a morning person, but when you wake up early he stumbled put of bed, hair messy, eyes closed and follows you like a sad puppy. Hes so clingy. Like SO clingy. Personal space. Gone. He talks to you through the bathroom door, holds you while you sleep, wants to be next to you all the time. He also loves your animals, especially the chickens. He has one favorite, but he won't say it (he might hurt the others feelings). Sometimes you come back from town and hes sitting outside on the porch talking to the chickens, who look strangely invested.

Sebastian:

He loves you so much, but he hates that everyone KNOWS he loves you. You gush about the sweet things he does to your friends and he goes bright red in the ears. The townsfolk ask about you so he tries to avoid having to talk to them. When you're alone though, he's the total opposite. Hes quiet, sure, but he does whatever he can to help you out. A kiss on your cheek before he goes to water the crops for you. Makes you a cup of coffee after work. When he was little, robin taught him how to carve and widdle. He makes you cute wooden figures, usually modeled after your animals. He takes you to the city for weekend date nights. He asks you to go on rides just to feel your arms around him.

Leah:

She treats you like the most beautiful painting shes ever layed her eyes on. When you're sitting with her on the beach, she'll paint dancing swirls up your arms to your hands. (Maybe you get it tattooed one day and she cries). All the paintings in your house are made by her. Much like Elliott, youre her muse. She makes you sit so she can paint you or practice sketching. But she can never get enough of you. When you lay together, she meticulously traces the shapes of your body. Your hands, your nose, your hips. Everything about you is perfect to her.

Emily:

She's a free, creative person. She wakes you up late at night to look at the stars and dance by the river. Shes been making a quilt out of scrap fabric for your bed. She tries to tesch you how to sew it so you cam be a part of it. She helps you with the crops and picks fresh vegetables when theh grow so she can make you beautiful dinners. She loves to cook for you because you always have something good to say about it. She could be on food network, you swear it. Every day when she gets ready, right after putting on her lipstick, she kisses your cheek to leave a little mark. You leave it there while you do your chores.

Penny:

Penny is naturally an early bird. She wakes up each morning with you. You two share a few minutes of quiet before stsrting coffee. You take turns making breakfast. Penny is so used to keeping the house up by herself after living with Pam, so being with you is a breath of fresh air. But she still likes to help you out. So before going to teach the kids, she helps out in the garden. You pass by in town while shes walking the kids home. You join them on their walk and Jas starts asking you for that princess story again. As you tell it, you see Penny's cheeks go pink. Its only the story of how you met. But to you it felt like a fairy tale. You walk home with your wife every day, sharing stories of your day while settling down on the porch.

Abigail:

Shes high energy. She heard about it, she wants to try it. Take her to the city to a nigt club and she'll dance circles with you all night. She makes you matching bracelets and you never dare to take it off. When you go down to the mines, she wants to come with. She doesn't fear them, but that scares you. You have to convince her to stay with the farm every time. But you always bring her a beautiful gemstone back. You think the amythest brings out her eyes. Shes a decent cook, actually. Contrary to what Sam and Sebastion may say. Her recipes are odd, but somehow, they always work out. Shes not a morning person, she won't get up even if you shake her. But somehow she knows if you forget to give her a kiss on your way out the door.

Haley:

She takes a million pictures of you. She loves to. You hide your face, she tells you how much she likes your smile. You're working on the farm and hear the shutter click. She likes the ways your arms look when you roll up your sleeves. After a long day in town, you bring her flowers. Shes always waiting up for you. She likes to slow dance in the living room and hear about your adventures from the day. She tells Alex about how great you are. Everytime you walk by and catch her off gaurd, she fixes her hair so she 'looks nice'. You just kiss her and tell her she looks nice all the time.

Maru:

She loves to help you out on thr farm. Just not... conventionally. She is her father's daughter, so shes always making you new inventions to make the farm run smoother. Better fertilizer, fresh feed thst produces better eggs, though she was banned from tending the animald after one of her feeds turned your chickens eggs bright pink. She loves to walk around town with you, always with your hand in hers. She's not a cook, but she still tries to learn from you. Shes learning, but she mostly just likes getting to be near you while you cook.

[fallloverfic]

Some of the later S-Classes that I Raised ebook art

While SCTIR was released originally chapter-by-chapter, the main story was later collected into ebooks, which were released with some mostly new interior illustrations. But I've only seen 1-2 posts recently with art from volumes 1-14, while JPLEMEDIA, SCTIR's publisher, has released a lot more of them on twitter, so I'll include those. This isn't focusing on volumes 1-14, but I do think it's interesting that the first interior illustration after Han Yoojin's bio in volume 1 is also in manhwa episode 5, while the other pieces seem to be original to the novels. The art for volumes 1-14 images are on the fanwiki (and any page that has official character art seems to be the one from the ebooks before they stopped posting those and just went with text bios), though you can also see some of them on twitter.

Below is new HQ versions of some of the early character portraits and other art from volumes 16-19, 21, 22, and 25, all from twitter. Massive story spoilers (without detail as much as possible) and CW: blood and injury below the read more:

Han Yoojin's character portrait from volume 1:

Sung Hyunje from volume 14:

And Han Yoohyun and Park Yerim's character portraits:

This is a piece from volume 16:

This is a piece from volume 17:

This is a piece from volume 18:

This is a piece from volume 19:

This is a piece from volume 21:

This is a piece from volume 22:

And this is a piece from volume 25:

If the others are floating in high quality somewhere else, I haven't spotted them, but I'll update this post as I find them. JPLEMEDIA has shared some cropped parts of pieces (the one in the link is from volume 23) but I don't think they're worth sharing here. You can browse their twitter if you'd like to see them.

[elbiotipo]

I'm not kidding when I say worldbuilding is extremely easy and fun, you can make easily all sorts of new fantasy worlds on like half an hour, follow this guide:

take a rectangle, draw a line through the middle, that's your equator, draw another two lines south and north, those are your tropics, draw another two lines further north (you can see a real world map to guide yourself), those are your arctic/antarctic circles

Draw continents, any shape you want, it's better to combine large soft blobs (like Africa or South America) with coastlines full of peninsulas and islands (like Europe or South Asia). Draw some island chains in between where you feel it's appropiate. Some inland seas like the Mediterranean are good too.

Decide where you will place mountain ranges. In real life, they are where oceanic-continental plates (Andes) or continental-continental plates (Himalayas, Alps), collide. These are very important.

Place rivers, just the most important ones. The places where you place big river systems are gonna be big plains.

Now, the fun part. With your first step, you've already decided where arctic, temperate, and tropical climates are there. You can mark it as letters in your map. Mountain ranges, of course, are colder.

Here's the tricky part: vegetation: vegetation mostly follows precipitation, and precipitation is mostly decided by altitude and distance from the ocean. The interior of your continents should be dry with plains and deserts; the coasts should be rainy with forests and plains. But remember, if you have a mountain range, that's a rain shadow! Picture the wind coming from the ocean with rain, and it should get less rainy when it "clashes" with a mountain range, with the other side a desert.

Deserts are tricky to place, but as a quick cheat, you can place them in your tropic lines. They can even border oceans: see Australia and the Kalahari.

WHEN IN DOUBT, LOOK AT SIMILAR AREAS ON A REAL WORLD VEGETATION/CLIMATE MAP. THIS IS WHY DRAWING THE EQUATOR AND THE TROPICS IS SO IMPORTANT AND SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST STEP ALWAYS.

Now you already have a quick and dirty vegetation map, you're halfway there! Don't worry if there are some doubtful areas, real world geography can be weird.

Now for the REAL fun stuff (if you aren't having fun already, I sure am): making civilizations!

You have to decide center of origins for your domesticated crops and animals. Basically, every early civilization had its own "package" of staple crops and animals that are still used today.

With this, you can decide:

the primary civilizations of your world

roughly how different animals and vegetation are distributed, if you want an Earth-like world (for an quicker method, you can apply the biogeographical realms to your own continents as you wish)

A quick cheat sheet of centers of origin, what they have, and where you can place them:

(this is just a quick thing, do read the article it's so much better)

Middle Eastern: wheat, barley, cows, sheep, goats. Place them in a dry area with lots of rivers (the Fertile Crescent!)

East Asia: rice, soybean, oranges, pigs, horses. Place it in a rainy temperate area bordering the tropics.

Mesoamerica: Corn, beans, pumpkin, chilli, tomato. Place it in a dry area near the tropics.

Andes: Potato, quinoa, llamas. Place it in a mountain range.

Tropical South America: manioc, peanuts, pineapple. In the tropics.

Tropical Asia: Rice, banana, sugar cane, beans. In the tropics, again.

or, just straight up use this fucking map, it's so much better:

You can mix and match the crops, animals, and such as you wish, and you should definitively read the wiki page on center of origins and see some other less known crops.

If you have non-human civilizations, of course they'll have different packages. Carnivore or subterranean civilizations might be very different. But at this point, your imagination should be flying already and I don't have to hold your hand here.

Now, you have a rough map of your world at the dawn of agriculture! Congratulations! Depending on the historical period you're setting your world, you can start to draw countries and civilizations. This is where it gets complicated again. I might have to make a part two... But just with this, you already have a new world to use as you wish.

I'll make a worked example later to show you how easy it is if you don't believe me.

[solradguy]

I'm not done hating on Xtra yet, I want to laugh how it was never included in anything. It's not in the timeline in the 10th Memorial Book (Xtra released September 22, 2003):

They put Raid of Arms in here though. You know, the lost media no one knows anything about that was exclusive to i-mode devices as part of the Guilty Gear Club website:

There's a list of books further down that doesn't have Xtra either. I included the top of the Soundtrack section to show I didn't crop it out or something.

Xtra was the only volume published by Kodansha instead of Studio DNA, Enterbrain, or Ohzora Publishing like all the other volumes, so none of the "other books in this series" advertising sections in any of the manga would have had it even if it did sell well and was popular.

That said, ASW never even announced its serialization OR physical volume release on their website. This is an October 2003 archive and the latest news were from August 1st and July 16th.

The next site archive Wayback has is from November 27, 2003, and updates to include a bunch of stuff from December '03 up to early February 2004, but it still doesn't mention Xtra anywhere. Xtra was serialized in Monthly Magazine-Z from December 2002 to September 2003. The guiltygearx site archive doesn't mention this serialization in any of the November or December 2002 news. This is just barely on the tail end of the era when the GGX website still linked to Sol/Ky yaoi pages, so you could probably argue that at one point ASW had more support for yaoi than it did for Xtra lol

None of the Guilty Gear Worlds mention Tyr or Mizuha either and the events of Xtra are only mentioned on the pages of characters that made cameos in it.

Like dust in the wind.

[monstersandmaw]

Male vampire x female character (Țepeș x Adriane - Full Moon Motorcycles) - Chapter One (sfw)

Hello all! While I'm finishing up this month's Patreon exclusive for you (m. dragonborn!), here's nearly 7k words of what was supposed to be the first in the Full Moon Motorcycle 'universe'. It's set before Demon's, Oats', and Pumpkin's stories!

I hope you come to love Țepeș as much as I have! He's got an interesting backstory, and although he looks intimidating, he's actually a huge softie under all that muscle and height. If you know Demon from his story, you get to see a different side of him in this, and you'll see why he was so keen not to introduce his human love interest to the gang after this (shitty) behaviour...

This is going to be up on Patreon on early release, but I'm keeping Demon's story back until it's finished so it doesn't spoil things, so keep that in mind if you leave a comment please :)

Content: plus size female character (unaware of the supernatural) is given a helping hand by the owner of a motorcycle shop, and returns later in the day to thank him, only to find half of the Full Moon Motorcycle bikers standing outside the shop that evening and goofing around. When she's offered a ride home, the tall, darkly-clad, silent biker nicknamed Țepeș volunteers to take her on his massive, black Ducati Streetfighter V4...

Wordcount: 6809

Extract:

A dark, scuff-sided delivery moped — unsurprisingly missing its left mirror — clipped her elbow as it sped down the side street, spewing a cloud of nasty petrol fumes strong enough to make her cough. As she cradled her arm against her chest to rub at her elbow, Adriane’s heavy, cotton bag jolted down off her shoulder to catch painfully in the crook of her arm, and she cursed elaborately.

“Watch where you’re going, arsehole!” she yelling after the moped a second later, but they were long gone.

To add insult to injury, she snagged her boot heel on a crack in the pavement and tripped backwards to land hard enough on her ass that all the breath left her body in an inelegant grunt, and she was lucky she didn’t bite her tongue off when her jaw clacked shut under the force of the landing. The straining seams of her ancient and over-full tote bag finally ruptured on impact, and loose sheafs of paper fluttered up and away like white doves into the blustery autumn air.

“Shitting fuck!” she shouted and scrabbled to catch the remaining ones. If all of those pages got away, she’d have nothing to show at the interview — for which she was now probably going to be late — and there was no way they’d take her seriously without some kind of portfolio. And boy did she need this job.

“You ok there?” a rough, bass voice asked from right behind her. “Here, lemme help you.”

“My stuff,” Adriane choked out around a sob without turning around. “Shit…” Tears of raw frustration, tinged with exhaustion, filled her eyes and she bowed her head, willing herself not to burst into tears on the sidewalk outside some gritty-looking motorcycle shop in the back street of this new and relatively unfamiliar town.

“Here, come on. Let’s get you up.”

“What’s the fucking point?” she groaned, but she did get her legs under her and let the stranger help her to her feet with a kindly hand at her elbow. He released her and stepped back, and she smoothed the floaty, floral-printed, chiffon skirt down over her curvy thighs and tugged irritably at the hem of her cropped denim jacket before looking up at her rescuer for the first time.

She found an older man moving away to a respectful distance now that she was upright, and she regarded him a little warily. He wasn’t particularly tall or threatening though, with his wavy, salt and pepper hair falling scruffily around his ears and just brushing the collar of his blue-and-white-checked shirt. He had a short, grey beard, kind, smiling brown eyes and a significant barrel-belly. He also looked like maybe the kind of guy who rode a Harley and took no nonsense when pushed, but he seemed harmless enough as he steadied her and then stepped back another pace.

Adriane looked along the street and saw that one of the pages of her portfolio had landed face-down in a puddle, and the rest were lost to the wind. “Fuck,” she said again. She was forced to clutch the torn remnants of her bag to her chest to keep its remaining contents together, which felt like a metaphor if ever she’d known one.

“What’s wrong?” the man asked, raising his head slightly and breathing in as if he’d caught the scent of a familiar perfume. As he did, his hazel brown eyes caught the light oddly and seemed to flash amber. “You hurt yourself?”

“I’m good,” she said automatically, then added with a gesture at the soggy pages, “That was my portfolio though. I just got it printed this morning, and I don’t have the time or the money to get it printed again. My interview starts in —” she glanced at the old, analogue wristwatch on her left wrist. Only now, after the fall, it was cracked. Well, at least it wasn’t some fancy smartwatch. None of those for her with her bank account idling somewhere in the low double figures. “— twenty-eight minutes.”

“How fancy are we talking?” he asked and she frowned, confused. The man jabbed his thumb over his shoulder and explained. “I’ve got a fairly decent printer in the shop for flyers and stuff. If you’ve got a thumb drive with the files on, you can print it off here.”

She blinked. Miracle of miracles, she did actually have the USB drive in her jacket pocket. “You serious? I can’t pay you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he said with a hearty smile. “C’mon. Time’s wasting and you ain’t got long.”

Adriane bit her lip, moved by the kindness of this complete stranger, and followed him into the bike shop.

Read the whole thing right now over on Patreon, and consider joining the Little Ghosties tier for access to this month's Patreon exclusive story, as well as my entire back catalogue of Patreon exclusive content.

[myemuisemo]

While I was pondering whether Mrs. Douglas had a "freeze" reaction to trauma in chapter V of The Valley of Fear, chapter VI appeared with the answer, and I fear Letters from Watson will soon provide chapter VII, so let's get cracking.

There are three things top of mind for me today:

The Panic of 1873

Yews

Dumbbells

The Panic of 1873

When I worked out the timeline for Cecil Barker's recounting of "we did this for five years and this for one year," etc., etc., assuming that the story takes place in late 1888 or early 1889, the year I got for Barker's likely arrival in the U.S. was 1873.

That's significant: he set off to make his fortune, ending up in the gold fields of California, about the time that a global depression was starting.

The short version of the Panic of 1873 is that after the Civil War, U.S. railroad bonds (that is, the debt used to finance railroad construction) were the hot investment, not just in the US, but in Europe, especially Germany. Nineteenth-century investing was mostly in bonds -- this is why people talk in Victorian novels about having investments in 3-percents that pay 10,000 pounds a year, or similar. When you invested your money, the company was literally in debt to you, and it paid you a safe "coupon" of interest on that debt.

Not all bonds were the same. People were "ruined" by investing in companies that did not have stable cash flow or were outright fraudulent.

The initial problem in 1873 was not with the railroads, though, but with trading in the bonds. When German investors moved on to other investments, there were too many railroad bonds running loose, causing their value to plummet. That took out a US bank that had a hefty investment in those bonds, as their asset value dropped. The bank failure caused a panic, which cascaded through the system. This article and this one explain some of the specifics.

Anyway, Cecil Barker seeks his fortune abroad at a time loosely equivalent to the Great Recession of 2008.

In 1873, California was wrapping up efforts to exterminate native peoples -- no, I'm not exaggerating. This was not covered in 4th grade state history, 5th grade U.S. history, nor 8th or 11th grade U.S. history when I was in school!

By 1873, Gold Rush hysteria was over and some of the original sites in the Sierra Nevada foothills had been largely mined-out and abandoned, though mining still continued where it could. San Francisco was establishing itself as "the Paris of the West." The Central Valley, where I live, was getting rail built down its length, with towns established at various points for taking on fuel and water, as well as for picking up wheat and other crops that didn't require intensive irrigation (which wouldn't arrive for ~40 years).

It's not me, it's YEW

After decades of reading British novels, I have finally looked up what a yew is. I'd always envisioned something like the Chinese juniper that's planted everywhere around here: a low, dense hedge with soft packets of needles and a pungent, dusty scent.

Nope. I far underestimated the yew. It is a tree that makes Tolkien's Ents look small and non-threatening. Visit this yew-focused page to see the most terrifying trees. The existence of the yew also explains folktales of the British Isles where fair folk live in hollow trees. Yikes.

The yew traditionally symbolizes death, so the yew hedge is an excellent place to hang out after one's husband is mysteriously murdered.

(While you're there, the Ancient Tree Inventory is great for hours of exploration and arboreal terror.)

Where is the missing dumbbell?

The fact that Douglas has dumbbells at all is interesting, as the physical culture movement only really took off in the US in the 1880s, and it was slower to arise in England due to a greater cultural emphasis on "games."

He may have been influenced by his German first wife, as it was German immigrants in the 1850s who popularized the "Turner" movement of liberal political philosophy and physical fitness, the latter through vigorous gymnastics. Turnverein had a significant role in bringing PE into American schools.

Depending how one interprets the dumbbells, Douglas could be:

Forward-thinking

Eccentric

Worried about physical attacks or about aging

Very into German culture

We can't ask Mrs. Douglas, as, per Cecil Barker, Douglas' "perfect" trust in her did not include telling her... oh, anything actually important about his life.

I really want to know who was using whom in this household.

[aritsukemo]

Paradise | Chapter Three - Sabito and Makomo | KNY

Summary: Sakonji Urokodaki's grueling training begins!

Warnings: Nothing much. Tanjiro, Y/n, and Sumiko are in pain for the majority of this chapter.

A/N: Here's chapter three that's been sitting in my drafts for like two to three months now! This is my first time doing a first pov so I hope my lack of expertise doesn't show too much!😅 I'm going to re-remind everyone once the next chapter comes out, but chapter four will be posted alongside the first oc profile! You'll only be able to read it over on Wattpad, but I hope everyone goes to give it a quick read whenever I post it! :D

Tagging: @overluvsick, @nursedflowers, @jspidey5 + anyone who wants to be tagged! <3

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Third Person Pov

Crickets and other noisy bugs converse loudly during the night. Tanjiro sits at a small table, a singular lamp by his side as his soft hand holds a brush—which bristles already stained in ink and are coloring symbols into the once clean sheet. The brush glides across the page until it comes to an abrupt stop and  goes back to the start, hovering over the next clean area of the paper. Tanjiro looks behind his shoulder. Nezuko sleeps peacefully on the futon behind him. Y/n sits propped up against the wall with one of her legs kicked up, her eyes closed, and silent snoring coming from her in steady breaths. Sumiko leans against her, also fast asleep.

Guess it's finally time to get some rest. After all, his first day of training begins tommorow.

Closing the book, the light shines on the book cover. It displays in big symbols and clean, black ink, "Journal" with his full name written in smaller characters below that. Tanjiro's hands leave the book at last after spending his final free day writing for hours without end..

First Person, Tanjiro's Pov

 "The Demon Slayer Corps has around several hundred members. It's an organization unrecognized by the government, yet it has existed since ancient times and continue to hunt demons today. As for the one leading the Demon Slayer Crops, however, that remains a mystery."

 "Demons. They mercilessly kill and feed on humans and their flesh. No one has a clue where or when they first appeared. Their physical prowess is remarkable. Wounds heal in the blink of an eye. Flesh is restored no matter what damage comes to it and limbs that are hacked off can easily regenerate. Some demons can shapeshift, others have otherwordly powers. The only ways to kill these heinous creatures are via sunlight or decapitation with a special sword."

 "The Demon Slayers battle demons with their mortal bodies. Since they're only human, they're wounds are slow to heal, and once lost, their limbs never grow back! Even so, they continue to selflessly fight to protect other humans!" Those were the first words Mr. Urokodaki spoke to us when our training to become demon slayer swordmen first began. As he was explaining everything, I couldn't help but look at her from the corner of my eye.

Y/n's face hid everything from me like an iron wall. Her scent opened a window for me to peer into, but whenever it did, it always left me puzzled. It always contradicted her in some way and that fact worries me.

I want to ask her so many questions. About these contradicting feelings, about her past that she for some reason refuses to tell.. I want to have a heart to heart with her like a brother and sister would..

But now's not the time for questions. For now, I need to focus on becoming a demon slayer so that I can start finding a cure to turn Nezuko back into a human!

 "I am a trainer. I literally train swordsmen," Urokodaki said to us that early morning, "There are many trainers like me all over Japan, and each of them train their pupils with their own regimen in their location."

 "To join the Demon Slayer Corps, you must survive the Final Selection process held on Mt. Fujikasane. Whether or not you're eligible for Final Selection is up to me," He explained. I remember thinking at the time, "Simple enough."

How naive I was..

 Starting today, I'm going to keep a journal for Nezuko.

 I'm decending the mountain again today. I'm going to train my hardest so that I don't die during Final Selection!

 After repeatedly descending the mountain, day after day, I'm starting to learn how to avoid most of the traps. I've become stronger and I'm even more adept at detecting scents than before. Even so..the traps are getting more and more difficult. At this point, I'm starting to believe he's actually trying to kill us! I nearly fell into a hidden pit of knives today..

 Despite the increase in difficulty, I seem to be the only one struggling to keep up. Y/n and Sumiko have cleared the mountain a couple times without problems. At first, Sumiko would trigger traps left and right fearlessly and would just narrowly dodge them. She really worried me for a while, but after some scolding from Mr. Urokodaki, she started trying to dodge them at last. I'm relieved that he stepped in before she got seriously injured.

 As for Y/n, she seems to be on a whole different level! She's quick on her feet—quicker than both me and Sumiko—and her natural senses manage to keep her from triggering most of the traps on the mountain. In only half a day, she had already managed to make it up and down the mountain three times! Seriously, how does she do that?

I run down the mountain as fast as I my legs can take me and leap over an oncoming rope. As soon as I planted my feet back onto the ground, a log comes swinging right at me! I barely dodged it and stumbled a bit. Because of that, I nearly triggered a trap..

Mr. Urokodaki's scent hits my nostrils and leads a clear trail to the next trap ahead. Knives fly from the trees and I find myself stopping to look. My heart skips as I swing my body out of the way, just bsrely dodging as the knives dig into the tree behind me.

My legs felt like jelly and I wobbled right into an obvious trap. I nearly twist my ankle catching myself before I fell completely into the hole—thank goodness for that, because under me were sharp knives, threatening to cut me open with even the slightest touch.

I gasped out in horror without realizing. But really, is a pit of knives really necessary?

As this was happening, Y/n and Sumiko shoot past me. Y/n is ahead, her face still like a stone as she hopped over ropes and other traps without so much as pausing for a breath. Sumiko mimcks her, taking wide leaps over everything until her foot steps down on her demise. A snap is heard and I suddenly see her dangling in the air by her foot.

 "Ah, Sumiko!" I manage to maneuver myself out of the way of the hole and crawl to my feet. I jog up to my little sister in need only to realize that the rope was just out of my reach. Oh no.

In the end, I accidentally triggered a trap trying to help her down and got myself stuck as well. Mr. Urokodaki had to cut us down and we both got a scolding for our slip ups..

 I made my descent down the mountain again today, sword in hand, but it really hampered my movements. I can't stop getting ensnared by traps! Sumiko seems to be having as much trouble as I am, if not worse. Her sense of balance has been thrown off entirely and she can't seem to dodge even the simplest of traps..

 Y/n started only a few days before we did, but she's already gotten the hang of her sword. She truly is amazing!

I run down the mountain, large sword hanging heavy on my hip and Sumiko by my side, and we simultaneously hop over a rope tied low to the ground. Urokodaki watches us in silence, arms crossed. And, although I can't see his face because of the mask, I know he's judging our every move.

Each trap I hop over, Sumiko lags behind, just barely being able to mimick my movements. She leaps after me, but she doesn't make it high enough to avoid a rope. I hear intense ruffling along with a small yelp and look over my shoulder to see that Sumiko's gone and there's a large pit where she used to stand.

 "Sumiko!" I find myself sliding to a stop, "Don't worry, I'll—" And then another snap echoes throughout the forest; a warning that I didn't process fast enough to heed. I fall back, but I wasn't even able to hit the ground before I'm snatched into the air..

We were kept stuck in our traps until Y/n finished her descent through the mountain. What makes things worse is that when Mr. Urokodaki cut me down, I fell right on my head..

 I swing my sword today. Well, it's not just today. After descending the mountain, I, along with Y/n and Sumiko, swing our swords until our arms nearly fall off. We do this every day.

 "Nine hundred ninety-one.. Nine hundred ninety-two..!" Numbers were shouted out in unison by all three of us as we stood side by side in a clearing at in the mountain. The evening glow shines down on us and our blades which causes them to gleam every time we swing downwards.

Every inch of my arm throbs with each tense of my muscles that are caused when I swing my sword. I've been clenching my teeth for so long that I'm scared they'll shatter if I don't ease up, but how am I supposed to do that? Even though they're beginning to numb over, my arms hurt so badly!

But at last, I can finally rest, "One thousand!" We all finally yell out, but immediately after we said that, Urokodaki gruffly follows up with his own shouting, "Five hundred more!" He told us.

And just as that demand reached my ears, I felt my tired soul completely shatter into pieces..

 "Swords break easily," That's what he told us beforehand. Though it's strong vertically, it's weak horizontally, so you need to apply the force straight along the blade. The blade's direction and the direction in which you apply force must be exactly the same. And that's when Urokodaki added, "If you ever damage the blade, in other words, break it, I'll snap your bones as well," in a very threatening tone of voice. Just thinking about it, makes me nervous all over again..

 Today, we did nothing but fall. We started training to break our falls and get up quickly from any position.

 We wield our swords, charging at Mr. Urokodaki, really trying to kill him. In contrast, Mr. Urokodaki is bare-handed and unarmed. Even so, he's ridiculously powerful! He flings me away and I roll on the ground every time..

 Even someone like Y/n seems to struggle when up against Mr. Urokodaki. She starts off good, getting up faster than me and Sumiko and manages to get a few swings in. None of them ever hit him, however, and in the end, she's always flung away just like me.

 Sumiko seems to have it the worse since she tends to charge at him with the intent on fighting bare-handed. Her sword gets in her way and she's always flipped or tossed away quicker than either of us. Every time it happens, my heart skips a beat thinking she'll accidentally land on her sword and hurt herself..

We stand before Mr. Urokodaki, swords in hand. I merely blink and in an instant, my world is flipped upside down! ..Literally. Before I even had the time to process that my feet were no longer planted on the ground, my face was already sliding against the gravel and my nose was already being invaded by the strong, muddy smell of the dirt that I had begun to grow used to.

As I crack my eyes open again, I spot Y/n running towards Mr. Urokodaki. She had already managed to regain her senses after the temprorary lapse and got up. How does she do that?

With her face scrunched in conentration, she charges forward and swings her blade when she's close enough. She immediately follows up with an upward slash attack after her intial strike misses. The movements of her swings are sharp, but I get the sense of aggression towards the tail end of every single strike. It's passive-aggressive which contrasts Mr. Urokodaki, who's movements are pretty lax as he dodges the majority of her swings by simply moving out of the way of her blade.

That relaxed air around his being leaves him for a mere moment as he goes on the offense. He suddenly charges forward and Y/n immediately raises her sword. She swings downwards with the intent of landing a singular strike, but he sidesteps her attack and I find myself having to tense and squint my eyes as to not miss Mr. Urokodaki's next movements. While she's still focused on her previous attack, Mr. Urokodaki steps behind her and lands a kick to the back of one of her knees which causes them to fold. She falls on one knee and Mr. Urokodaki waste no time in kicking her in the side and sending her tumbling away.

Both me and Sumiko get up at the same time, but I attack first. I run as fast as I can, mouth open and yelling as I hold my sword above my head..

And in less than a second, my view of the world was flipped upside down again and spinning like a wheel. I couldn't feel the ground anymore either which made it finally dawn on me what just happened; Mr. Urokodaki had flipped me into the air and the momentum of his throw had me rolling midair!

The revelation hits at the same time that I hit the ground. I land right on my chest which knocks the majority of the air outta my lungs in a loud gusp. Quickly after that, I hear light groans that signal Sumiko's defeat.

 "Again!" I hear Mr. Urokodaki demand and I catch myself groaning softly as I peel myself off the gravel. I don't know how long I can take being tossed around like this..

 Today, we learned breathing techniques and some forms. We'd get yelled at for not bracing our stomachs and clobbered to a plup..

 "Total Concentration breathing?" I questioned, my head instinctively tilting to the side a little.

 "That's right," Urokodaki said, "And I'm going to teach you three all ten of the Water Breathing forms."

 "Remember to take a long breath so the oxygen flows into every cell in your body," He told us, "This will enhance your body's natural healing power, and both stabilize and energize your spirit."

 "Relax your upper body.." He instructs and we do as he tells us to the best of our abilities, all of our shoulders' slumping, "..while bracing your lower half," I tense up my legs and feet. Y/n and Sumiko do the same.

 "All right, now breathe!" My head tilts back, and at a turtle's pace, I suck in as much air as I can. I exhale just as slowly, my whole body slumping..and then, bam! My eyes shoot open as pain shoots through my entire body and spit is propelled from my mouth and shot out in all directions.

Mr. Urokodaki had smacked me in the stomach and it felt horrible!

To try and ease the pain, my body curls into itself. I'm hunched over, shaking with my arms wrapped around my stomach and my knees bending when I hear Mr. Urokodaki yell, "Wrong!" And I hear groans. I guess Y/n and Sumiko had met a smiliar, painful fate.

 "Next! Forms!" Mr. Urokodaki shouts and we have no choice but to straighten back up. He didn't give us much to go off of, but I was determined and struck a pose anyways.

 "Right! Like this?" I ask, "Wrong!" He yells. And so, I snap into a different pose.

 "Like this?" I ask again only for him to repeat, "Wrong!" I change poses once again and promptly ignore the sideway looks of confusion, dissaproval, and embarrassment I get from my sisters—the latter two more apparent in the look Y/n gives me; the former one more accurately represented in Sumiko's dot-eyed expression—and yell out, "This?"

In an instant Mr. Urokodaki had popped me in the stomach once, then twice, then a third time, and unfortunately a fourth, fifth, and sixth which elicited a loud, whiny moan from me.

 After that, he told us to become one with the water.

We stood fairly high up on one of the ledges near the mountain we descend every morning as a warm up. Before us was a large waterfall that was so noisy that we struggled to hear each other despite standing side by side with one another. It loudly flowed it's abundance of water down to the bottom, which I couldn't really see all that well due to the constant stream blending together and crashing down producing a light steam at the bottom from the sheer coldness of the water..

And then, our demise rings out in the form of Mr. Urokodaki's voice, "What are you waiting for? Get in there!" And we're suddenly kicked off. Off instinct, I try to run away from my fate, but all it does is prolong the inevitable until gravity finally hits me and I go falling along with Y/n and Sumiko.

My stomach flutters in an uneasy sorta way at the airy feeling of falling from such a high vantage point. I scream, going to call out for the first person that pops into my head, "Nezuko..!" I drawl until I finally hit the water with a loud splash!

After a moment of floating along the stream, we all manage to pick ourselves up and huddle under the waterfall. As the heavy water comes relentlessly crashing down onto us, we stay firmly planted with our hands mashed together as if we were praying.

 "Nezuko..!" I find myself yelling, my voice being carried in the wind. Echoing and bouncing off the rushing waterfall, "I...! ..Am...! ..Water..!"

My constant yelling must've really irked Y/n, because after a while, she shouted at me, her voice strained but angry, "Could you..! Shut up..! ..For one second..?"

 As of now, it's been six months since Nezuko was last awake. Mr. Urokodaki summoned a doctor right away and had him examine her, but he found nothing wrong.

 But it's not normal for her to stay asleep like this.. I'm scared. Scared that one morning, I'll wake up to find her dead. Not a day goes by that I don't worry..

 Sumiko had begun staying up later and later at night. I think she's also worried about that possibility and it's causing her to fear sleeping. I try to soothe her nerves as best I can, but I fail to do much.. At least she seems to be getting along with Mr. Urokodaki well. I sometimes catch them talking late at night when they assume everyone's asleep. I have no idea what their talks could be about, but soon after their late night talks began, Mr. Urokodaki had started supplying her with books. She tends to stay up all night reading them now and it got to the point where catching her fast asleep, face first in a book was a common sight we all saw of her in the mornings.

 Whenever we talk about Nezuko, Y/n's face scrunches and she always says that it's only a matter of time. It upsets me badly to hear that she has no faith in Nezuko ever awaking up again, but now that I think on it, this is probably her way of coping with the situation herself. I think she's trying to be overly pessimistic in case of the worst happening so that she doesn't fall apart. Looking back on it, she acted like that for a while when dad's health started to decline and he was bedridden..

 My descents are getting more dangerous and the air's even thinner since we've started descending from a higher point in the mountain. Time and time again, I think I might die, but at the same time, I've felt that, not just I, but all three of us have gotten stronger! Under Mr. Urokodaki's steady, stern guidance, we've all grown and I was sure at the time that we'd reach unspeakable heights with his help! ..And then it happened.. }

 "As of today, I have nothing more to teach you. The rest is up to you!"

 A year after we arrived at Mt. Sagiri, he told me that all of a sudden after I descended the mountain. I remember that initial feeling of surprise that struck me followed quickly by fear. After all, when he said that, it was just me there. I was the last out of the three of us to make it down the mountain. My first assumption was that this was some kind of punishment because of my own shortcomings, but then he told me to follow him. We walked for a long while—long enough for the air around us to grow colder and the snow to finally start falling—before we finally made it to a wide clearing with..a boulder in the center of it..

I found myself staring on in awe. Before me, was the largest boulder I had ever seen in my life. It was taller than both me and Mr. Urokodaki and wide to boot! That being said, it was surprising to see that a rope with long shide attached to it was wrapped all the way around it.

 "If you can slice this boulder, I will allow you to enter Final Selection," Mr. Urokodaki said after a while of my gawking. Without blinking, my eyes glide over to look at him and I only move my head a little to gaze at him for a moment before my head slid back in place and my eyes found itself on the large rock again.

I found myself thinking, "Is a boulder, especially on so big..even capable of being sliced with a sword? ..I don't think I can.." I barely noticed it, but my hand had made it's way to wrap around my sheathed katana, just under the hilt, "My sword will snap, no question!"

During my silent distress, Mr. Urokodaki stayed just as silent. Without any advice or tips or instructions, he turned on his heel and began walking away from me, "Mr. Urokodaki, please wait! ..Mr. Urokodaki!" I called his name again and again, but he just kept walking without turning back or saying anything to acknowledge my calls, leaving me alone with the tough boulder and the soft snow falling around me.. 

 After that, Mr. Urokodaki never taught me anything again. Not just me, he apparently did the same thing to Sumiko and Y/n, taking them to one of the many designated clearings in the mountain and giving them the same task before leaving. That thought comforted me a little knowing that I wasn't alone in this.

 Every day after that, I practiced what Mr. Urokodaki taught us over and over by myself. I was able to go over the basics like holding my breath and flexibility without trouble thanks to the notes I'd written down in this journal. But, even after six months had passed, I still couldn't slice the boulder. I felt frustrated. I wasn't training hard enough and it showed every single day I failed..

 But, just when the despair of the situation started to set in, he appeared..

A loud clank rang, echoing my failure throughout the area. I stood there with my sword laid against the boulder after having smacked my blade against the thick rock. My head hung low under the evening's bright, yellow glow and I huffed softly, unable to catch my breath.

 "Am I hopeless?" The thought stained my mind like ink on paper. It spread, inviting similar thoughts into my head until it plagued my brain entirely.

 "Have Y/n and Sumiko already sliced their boulders in half? Will they go on to become demon slayers without me?"

 "Is Nezuko going to die without ever waking up?"

Those thoughts made me anxious which made it hard to shake them away easily. They were dark, like black paint and had smeared itself all over and made it hard to think of anything else aside from this heavy feeling that had already begun to sink to the bottom of my gut; that depressing feeling of self-dissatisfaction.

But I can't give up! I've spent all this time training! It can't all be for nothing! I won't allow it to all be for nothing! This is for Nezuko!

Using those small pebbles of determination, I clench my teeth, move my sword out of the way, and headbutt the boulder. All while yelling words of encouragement into the air.

 "Keep working, Tanjiro!" I told myself, "You can do it! You have to!" And then landed another headbutt to the boulder. That seemed to anger it, because after that second headbutt, it screamed at me, "Shut up!"

..Wait, that wasn't the boulder. Looking up, my eyes immediately lock on a fox mask and I feel my brows scrunching from confusion. Sitting atop the boulder with his leg kicked up, was a kid seemingly around my age. His pink hair reminded me of a ripe peach and blended well with our surroundings, which were colored in orange and yellow to match the sky above. That said, his kimono top and calf leggings were covered in clashing, bright, yellow and green shapes that had me racking my brain from how familiar the pattern was.

 "A man shouldn't whine. It's unseemly," His voice caught me off guard because of how much deeper it was compared to my own. However, it wasn't gruff like Mr. Urokodaki's and still held this certain smoothness of youth that kept me from thinking he was older than me.

His sudden appearance raised questions that temporarily shushed the loud, disheartening thoughts screaming and running amok in my head. There was no scent to him which formed some of my biggest questions. Never in my life have I never been able to catch the scent of someone. Never.

 "No matter how much your suffer, a man should always bear it in silence," He got to his feet, and that finally made me take notice of the wooden sword in his hand, "That is, if you call yourself a man," And with that, he gracefully lept into the air. His plain, white haori raised, floating in the wind just like his hair. It distracted me, and because of that distraction, I wasn't able to process the shift in the air when he flipped. If it wasn't for my instincts, I would've also missed the raising of his wooden sword before it was brought down onto me with a sudden force.

His blade clanged against my metal hilt and before I was able to take in the fact that he was suddenly attacking me, the boy landed another attack on me. This time twisting to land a kick to my chin that had me flying back and landing on my head.

 "Slow. Weak. Immature. None of those are qualities of a man," He said and I found myself growing angry. Not because of his petty insult, but because of the fact that he attacked me without reason.

 "What are you doing?" I asked him only for him to mimic me and ask, "I'd like to know what you think you're doing."

 "What do you mean? I'm training," I told him, but he replied with a mean, "Hardly."

 "Now, how long do you plan to sit on your butt and not take a stance?" I don't know why, but when he said that, my body immediately moved. The authority in his tone was terrifyingly familiar so maybe that was the reason.

In so many ways..he reminds me of Mr. Urokodaki. I guess that's why my body jumped to do as he said.

He raises his hand and gestures me closer, "Come on. Come at me," He said, but I found myself hesitating.

 "But I have a real sword and you don't! What if you get hurt?" The question made him pause. I thought that was because it finally dawned on him how crazy he sounded for suggesting me to attack him wih an actual sword, but that didn't seem to be the case. Instead, his shoulders—no, his entire body shook and he threw his head back, laughing as if I had said the funniest joke in the world.

 "Well aren't you considerate! Thank you for worrying about me," He said, but the way he said it didn't sound the least bit grateful. He then said, "So, you think you're actually going to injure me?" And then he was suddenly in front of me. I stepped back on instinct with my blade raised halfway—a good move on my part, because he immediately brought his blade down on me and I was fast enough to meet him the rest of the way and block him.

He was strong. Even though he was fighting me with a wooden, practice sword, I still found my body shaking, quivering under the power he's putting against my actual sword. I remember it shocked me along with his next words, "Well, you have absolutely nothing to worry about!" He so confidently said to me, "I'm far more powerful than you! After all, I've already sliced my boulder!"

Those words echoed in my ears as they were slowly injested. He..sliced a boulder? The thought shocked me as much as it sparked hope in me. The fact that it's not impossible made a tiny weight lift off my heart.

But I had no time to dwell in that feeling, because the masked boy jumped into the air. As dust kicked up where he previously stood, I found my eyes closing—an almost deadly mistake. I was lucky enough that time to feel the shift in the wind. I turn at the last second, just fast enough to throw my sword up to block the boy's incoming attack from above. It didn't faze him at all. He jumped back and immediately jumped into the air again.

His speed was incredible. I could just barely catch the aftermath of his jumps as he zipped around me. I could only assume that he would touch the ground whenever he passed a tree because I could never catch him touching the ground. It was almost as if he was flying and it left me looking around like a chicken without its head.

Then suddenly, he was right beside me. I was able to see him at last, but him being right at my shoulder didn't process fast enough. In the end, all I had time to do was turn my head to look at him—with a look that probably told everything I was thinking in that moment—before the thunder of my first defeat was sounded and I was suddenly on the floor, my face and body stinging and shaking a little..

 "You've learned nothing," He stood behind me, totally composed aside from his voice that sounded pretty upset, kinda like Urokodaki when he used to scold me for my mistakes, "You haven't mastered a single thing! Certainly not the breathing technique taught by Mr. Urokodaki; Total Concentration Breathing!"

That caught my attention most out of everything else he said. It made waves of confusion and surprise wash over me and temporarily redirected me from the pain he inflicted on me, "He knew Mr Urokodaki? The breathing technique too?" Were the questions that intially surfaced, but his identity is still on the top of my list of questions for him.

As I turned my body to face him and sat up, he continued, "All you did was memorize it as fact!" He lifts his sword and points it at me, "Your body has no clue what it needs to do!"

 "Just what the hell were you doing for a whole year and a half?" The question rang out extra loud just as his sword clanged against my steel, "You need to slam it into your flesh!" He shouted as he broke away as did I only to immediately clash our blades again.

 "More!" As he picked up speed, I tried to do the same, trying my hardest to replicate his movements. Thankfully, I was just fast enough that his blade met mine continuously instead of my battered skin, "More!" I took the defensive, staying strong as he slammed and hammered his blade against mine in a quick succession, "More!" A particularly strong hit sends me back but I plant my feet into the ground and manage to still myself before he closes the distance and I was forced to go on the offensive once again, "So that you become the embodiment of what Mr. Urokodaki taught you!"

He sends me back again and I recover quick enough to watch him ready his next attack and swing it at me, all while screaming at me, "Pound it all into the marrow of your bones!" 

 "I'm trying!" I found myself crying out the next time our blades met, "Every single day! I'm trying with everything I got!"

 "..But I'm not making any headway!" As my own words sunk in like a rock falling to the bottom of a lake, I found my voice slowly cracking apart just as my resolve has been these past six months, and I finally admitted aloud, "I just can't go any further!"

Despite that all he did was tell me as he lunged at me, "Don't 'try', just do it! If you're a man.." And then he quickly landed his attack on me, smacking me in the chest. I clench my teeth as the striking pain begun to spread and my feet left the ground for just a moment before they're forced back down as he harshly slammed his sword down onto my arm, "..If you call yourself a man!" And just as I raised my sword to attack him back, he spins and his sword hits my chest again, but at an angle this time.

 "There's no other way to go but forward!" I stumbled back, my feet uncomfortably light which made me tip and sway in different directions. The boy followed after me as if he was chasing down a fleeing wild animal. Our blades clashed again and he shouted, "Bring it on!"

 "Show me what you're capable of!" He swings at me, but this time I'm quick enough to completely jump out of the way. His words had an extra surge of adrenline shoot through me and I found my mouth falling open and letting out a loud scream of my own. No words, just a strong yell that came from the core of my chest—from the depths of my heart—where all my pent up frustration resided.

But then I miss my swing and my second defeat is sounded in an instant. It's painful, moreso physically as I watched his arm swing up and I felt his wooden sword collide with my chin. It was an extra powerful swing, one that had me flying several inches off the ground when it hit me. My entire jaw immediately numbed over in a desperate attempt to soothe the searing pain that shot through it and up my cheeks.

And then, suddenly all I could feel was that pain as my vision slowly faded. I had passed out, but what made matters worse was that I hadn't even hit the floor before everything went black..

The next time I opened my eyes, I was met with the sight of the crescent moon peaking through cracks made by thin clouds. All the pain in my face had dulled aside from my chin which stung like a bad bee sting. Everything around me had a blue-tinted screen over it that matched sky, signalling that nighttime had arrived. My eyes widen at the realization.

 "Are you alright?" A voice asked. It was soothing to my ears, kinda like putting a cool cloth on a bad bruise. It was nothing like his voice.

I shot up, immediately turning my head to be met face to face with eyes that match the night sky above. Despite her sudden presence, the only question I asked her was, "Did you see that?" She tilted her head, signalling to me her confusion but I continued regardless, my eyes blown wide.

 "That was an incredible blow! Not a single bit of unwasted motion! It was beautiful!" I praised. It really was amazing and my words could hardly explain it in a way that gave it proper justice which is probably why I started moving my hands and shaking my head to further exaggerate my point.

Now that I look back on that moment, I probably looked really silly to her.

 "I want to become a swordsman like that!" I exclaimed and then I asked her, "Do you think I can become like him?" And I watch as her lips widen into a smile. One without a hint of underlying doubt or hidden skepticism. It was a completely pure and trusting smile that she gave me as she spoke in a soft voice.

 "I'm sure you can..since I'll be looking after you from now on," She told me. And it was only then, when her thick eyelashes fluttered and her eyes closed, and that pure, trusting smile of hers widened that I realized just how pretty the girl before me was..

But who was she? It was then that it dawned on me that I didn't even ask. And so, with my cheeks tingly and warm and my heavy jaw having my bottom lip hung low, I mumbled out, "Who are you?"

 That night, she told me her name, Makomo, as well the name of the boy I sparred with, Sabito.

 Makomo points out the defects in my style. Throughout countless days, she corrected my unnecessary movements and my bad habits.. I found myself wondering, why? Why is she doing this for me? Where did she come from? I once asked her, but she didn't tell me anything. Something in me refrained me from asking the others about her or Sabito..

 Speaking of which, Makomo often said, "We love Mr. Urokodaki very much." It was her favorite phrase. She said that Sabito and her weren't siblings and that Mr. Urokodaki raised them after they'd been orphaned.

 "They're other children besides us. They're always around, watching you, Tanjiro," was something she said to me once. You see, I've come to realize that Makomo is a bit of a strange girl. Her way of speaking is abstract and dreamy and she says things in a weird way..

 "See, Total Concentration Breathing accelerates your blood circulation and your heart rate. That causes your temperature to shoot up and makes you strong like a demon despite still being human," She explained, "You expand your lungs and bring lots of air into your blood and when it gets excited, your bones and muscles scurry to heat up and grow stronger!"

 "..Huh?" Was all I could say, my face twisted into a puzzled expression. Maybe it was the words she used to explain it, but I didn't understand the majority of what she said. And so, I asked her, "How can I do that?"

And she looked at me with that kind, angelic smile and told me in the nicest voice ever, "Train to death. At the end of the day, I don't think there's anything else you can do."

 I swung my sword over and over so hard until my arms and legs felt like they were going to fall off.. Until my lungs were ready to burst into flames, I did that for so long..but even then, I just couldn't beat Sabito.

 I would train hard under Makomo's gentle guidance until it felt like I was going to just kneel over and die on the spot, but he still always got the better of me. It was only until six months later, and six months after Y/n cut her boulder, when the snow coated every speck of grass and every wilting tree in sight..

I stood before Sabito once again. The sun was out, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking due to the thick clouds that covered it and made snow fall in all ways and directions. The wind was icy against my dirtied skin—colder than when I first stood before him and the boulder—but I didn't flinch even when it blew so strong that my hair flailed it's grown out lengths wildly.

 When I challenged him that day, Sabito was wielding a real sword..

 "After six months, finally, you have the look of a man," I watched his movements as he gripped the scabbard and used his other hand to grab ahold of the hilt. The eerie sound of the steel sliding out didn't scare me and neither did the sight of his blade gleaming under the dim lighting as it was pulled out and pointed at me.

I had long pulled my sword from it's scabbard and gotten into my stance, my brows creasing downwards and scrunched into my dirt-covered skin, "Today's the day I win!"

 The head-on battle was simple. Who ever was stronger and faster wins.

My mouth opens as wide as a small crack—just wide enough for air to enter my mouth. Slowly, I breathe in. My chest steadily rises as my lungs swell with air. I then close my mouth, my grip tightening on the hilt of my katana..and dash forward at the same time Sabito does.

 The battle was over in an instant..

We immediately found ourselves closing the gap. Both of our swords were raised the entire time, and it was in that fraction of a second that I swung down with all my might..

 On that day, in that moment, for the first time, my blade reached Sabito first.

With a hollow clack, his mask split and fell on either side of him, suspended on the sides of his neck by that thick, red rope that was tied to it. His face..didn't match anything I had pictured originally. His eyes were a foggy purple and gentle like the falling snow around us. It contrasted that peach pink hair of his which barely covered the sides of his face so I saw that large, spiky scar that hiked up at an angle and covered the majority of his otherwise smooth skin. And his smile.. That smile that he gave me as his brows scrunched together..was so full of relief.

 That moment I won, Sabito smiled. It seemed like a sad smile to me at the time, but looking back on it, it seemed more proud and reassuring than somber..

 "Tanjiro.." I was so encaptured by him and that smile of his that it took Makomo's gentle voice to pull me back down to earth which, seemed much foggier than when I left it a mere moment ago. I find myself blinking, as if what I was seeing was an illusion or hallucination, but the thick fog never disappeared.

 "You did great," Her praise is what made me finally turn my head her way. Her body was steadily disappearing in the fog and I found myself looking on in silence, at a loss for words for what I was witnessing..

 The next thing I knew, Sabito and Makomo were gone..

 "Don't forget what you just did and win against them, okay? Beat that guy too," And she was gone, disappearing into the shrouding fog as if she was never there to begin with..

 ..And my sword, which I was sure had slashed Sabito's mask..

I turn my head back, but Sabito was gone too. Leaving me to gaze at the thick fog and watching as it slowly cleared away into nothing. Sabito and Makomo were still nowhere to be found, but that wasn't what made my eyes widen. What made my eyes grow wide like a bug's was the fact that I was gazing through a rocky opening  just narrow enough that only my blade could slip through.

 ..had sliced the boulder in half.

Y/n Kamado | *Arms crossed* So, you actually managed to do it..

Tanjiro Kamado | *Smiles with hands on his hips* Yeah! I was shocked, too! I never imagined I'd be able to cut a boulder like that! I couldn't have done it without Sabito and Makomo. I can't thank them enough.

Y/n Kamado | ..Who are they?

Tanjiro Kamado | *Speechless by his own slip up*

Y/n Kamado | ..Well? Who are—

Tanjiro Kamado | *Panicked* Uh- Now, It's time for a Taisho Era Secret!

Y/n Kamado | Wait, you haven't answered my—

Tanjiro Kamado | *Leans in and whispers* Why does Mr. Urokodaki wear a mask? I heard that's because demons used to make fun of him for looking too kind.

Y/n Kamado | *Visibly irked* Hey! Don't ignore me! Answer—!

Tanjiro Kamado | Everyone, we'll continue working hard to find a cure for Nezuko! And Ms. Ari, I hope that you make a full recovery soon!

Y/n Kamado | Who the hell is that? And who are you talking to—

Tanjiro Kamado | Next time, chapter four, "Final Selection"! Bye everyone! *Runs away*

Y/n Kamado | Tanjiro..! Get your ass back here and answer me! *Runs after him*

Dividers were made by me, pictures used are from Pinterest, post formatting is inspired by @xxsabitoxx

[gothhabiba]

here's one that's even more bonkers that I didn't report on. it involves writers over at Haaretz being very incompetent.

on the age of chickpea cultivation in Palestine, people variously say 10,000 BC, 8400 BC, 8000 BC, 7000 BC &c. as if at random.

foodtimeline.org (which supposedly provides sources to the researcher but has betrayed me many, many times) cites: Food in the Ancient World From A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge: London] 2003 (p. 84).

Dalby says:

Chickpea, one of the oldest cultivated pulses in the Near East. Chickpeas were grown in Palestine by 8000 BC.

this book is actually useless from a research perspective and belongs to what I like to call the "just some guy saying something" approach to making claims. none of the works cited at the end of the page on chickpeas (yes! none of the claims are associated with a particular work! there are no footnotes! so if you want to trace a particular claim, you've gotta look in each work mentioned! lol!) are scholarly works either, all of them also belong to the "some guy saying something" school of thought, and, most dizzyingly, none of them contain the 8000 BC claim!

okay, let's take another tack. wikipedia says:

"The earliest well-preserved archaeobotanical evidence of chickpea outside its wild progenitor's natural distribution area comes from the site of Tell el-Kerkh, in modern Syria, dating back to the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic period around (c.8400BCE). [12]"

[12] turns out to be an article titled "The Strange Origin Story of the Chickpea" on Haaretz (ugh), which is hardly a scholarly source, but perhaps it cites one! Haaretz says:

The question addressed in a new paper published in May in the journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution is historic: how the domestic chickpea arose and spread, first apparently to the Middle East – signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E. – and onwards, the western Mediterranean and to Asia, and to eastern Africa (specifically, Ethiopia).

the particularly sharp-eyed among you may notice that "10th millennium BC" (10,000 to 9,001 BC) is a different claim from "8400 BC," but, oh well, let's click that link.

it's a paper titled "Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics." it contains no references to the finds in el-Kerkh, or to a 10th millennium BC claim, or a 9th century BC (which the year 8400 belongs to) claim; it's more about developing a model to trace spread, rather than attesting evidence for any particular date. the author of this article must have just added the information about the site in Syria from, idk, their own background knowledge? lol.

but let's keep pushing this. elsewhere in the same article, a paper titled "Draft genome sequence of Cicer reticulatum L., the wild progenitor of chickpea provides a resource for agronomic trait improvement" is linked. this paper contains in its introduction the claim:

Chickpea was domesticated with wheat, barley, peas and lentil as a member of West Asian Neolithic crops during the origin of agriculture around 10,000 years ago with the oldest archaeological evidence from 7500 B.C.4,5 

also a very different claim from both "8400" and "10th millennium BC", but okay, let's try to trace this one.

citation 4 is a paper titled "Evolution of cultivated chickpea: four bottlenecks limit diversity and constrain adaptation," and it also has to do with something completely different from archaeological evidence for chickpea cultivation. in reference to the claim it is cited to support, it contains only the sentence:

Chickpea is [...] associated with the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent some 10000 years ago.

for this rather vague claim, they themselves cite two other sources: 2000, Lev-Yadun et al. "The cradle of agriculture," Science 288, 1602-1603; and 1999, Zohary D, Hoph M "Monophyletic vs. polyphyletic origin of the crops on which agriculture was founded in the Near East," Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 46, 133-142.

citation 5 is Harlan J. R. 1971, "Agricultural origins: centers and noncenters," Science, 174, 468–474. this one says, summarizing other research, that in the "Near East" (bleucgh)

barley, einkorn, emmer, peas, lentils, flax, vetch, and chickpeas appear to have been domesticated, together with sheep, goats, pigs, and possibly cattle.

the source for this sentence is G. Wright and A. Gordus, Amler. J. Archaeol. 73, 75 (1969).

okay, well, this is starting to get obviously silly; trying to trace these claims further and further back until a primary report of an actual archaeology site is found is clearly pointless, especially since at this rate the find would be from like 1954 and almost certainly new evidence has come to light since then.

let's try something else. despite the fact that Haaretz's "signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E" claim didn't actually come from the source that they cited, surely it must have come from somewhere?

I find two papers describing the finds in el-Kerkh, written by the same team. "The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L.: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium B.P." is the one that deals specifically with the chickpea findings.

aha! here, perhaps, is the source of the "10th millennium BC" claim! I suspect someone misread the title of this article, and read nothing else!!

the trouble is twofold: 1. "10th millennium BP" is given as the age of the site, not specifically of the cultivated chickpeas that were found; and 2:

"BP" is not "BC"!!!

"BP" is a metric of time used in carbon dating. it means "before present." the "present" is set to the year 1950, since this is close to when carbon dating was introduced. 10,000 years before 1950 is 8050 BC, and this is the absolute oldest date allowable based on just the title of the paper.

however, if we actually read the paper (or, I mean, skim it for a date, lol), we finally find something concerned with dating a particular site rather than making a genetic model; still better, we find this beautiful, readily comprehensible table shewing us "Archaeobotanical records for C. arietinum [...] in the early Neolithic periods", citing a specific site, the number of beans found there, the estimated date BP of those beans based on carbon dating, and a reference to the paper that details each find:

the "this paper" reference based on the Tell el-Kerkh site gives the date

9350-9165 B.P.! that's 7400-7215 BC! we have a date range at last!

other papers in this chart give estimates that are more recent (e.g. 9320 - 9175 BP), based on papers from the 80s and 90s.

so, if this paper is more recent that any other citation I found during this whole journey (2006), and it claims to have pushed the date on the earliest piece of archaeological evidence for cultivation of the chickpea back (note that archaeological is different than evidence based on literature, genetics, &c.), then where on earth are "8000 BC" and "8400 BC" coming from? I still don't know.

tl;dr: a lot of people say that wikipedia, research blogs online, popular news publications, and things of that ilk are not sources on their own, but that they can be a good starting point to help you find sources. I no longer believe that to be the case. you are better off just starting in jstor or google scholar &c. and ignoring everything else. the claims you find in the latter way may, however, still be wild goose chases even if they are published in scholarly journals. the citation webs in academic journals are dizzying and people rarely trace a claim back to its actual origin, instead content to cite a source that cites a source that cites a source that cites a source........

anyway. I share my humble stories simply for entertainment purposes only.

[felassan]

this post is under a cut in case anyone would consider it to be DA:D spoilers. (the things it mentions are not new information and it's minor stuff only)

a few weeks ago it was noticed that on this website, a new VA was listed as the voice of several named characters in DA:D - 'Olen', 'Marek’, 'Lord Borgiani’ and 'Templar Captain'. [source] like I said in the tags on that post, I'd guess that these are more minor-type of characters, like sidequest chars or quest-givers, -type of deal. (so this is overanalyzing for sure ik, its just a bit of fun). I was thinking about this again today, wondering what type of characters (e.g. what race, where are they from etc) they are, and also got to looking up the names online. disclaimer: I was just poking around on Google here, if anything here is incorrect or you're familiar with the names/words and know better, pls lmk! ^^

none of the names return any results on the DA Wiki.

Lord Borgiani - Borgiani seems to be a surname that originates in Italy. the nations and groups in Thedas have multiple inspirations/influences from irl (not just the one) ofc. one of these for Antiva is said to be Italy. Borgiani sounds like it could be an Antivan name, so I'm wondering if Lord Borgiani is Antivan. "Lord" implies they are a dude. their Lord status could imply that they're human nobility. Lord/Lady is a noble title in Antiva (not only there though, ofc). thinking of characters like Lord Otranto from Josie's romance and Lord Enzo of Rialto. putting "borgiani" into Google translate, it detects Corsican as the language and advises "bourgeois" in English, which, you could easily make a link from there to a character who has some form of status.

Marek - a "West Slavic (Czech, Polish and Slovak) masculine given name", like "Mark" in English. it's also a surname. allegedly the name means "warlike" or is ultimately derived from Mars, the Roman god of war via, e.g., "Marcus" (name sites are quite unreliable though in terms of the info on them sometimes). Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slavic & so on names in DA World crop up quite a bit as the names of dwarven characters, so I wonder if Marek is a dwarf?

Olen - a given name and a surname. it's also a place in Belgium and Russia, and Olen was a legendary early poet from Lycia. this page gives Olen as being a name related to the name Ole, "a Danish and Norwegian masculine given name, derived from the Old Norse name Óláfr, meaning "ancestor's descendant". this page gives it as the "masculine form of Olena, a name ultimately derived from Ole." hmm, maybe someone Fereldan, Avvar, dwarven or from the Anderfels?

Templar Captain - as a character without a specified given name, surely they are a minor-minor/background character like e.g., "Templar Guard" from Lake Calenhad Docks (DA:O). self-explanatory. likely human.

[context, two]

[broncoburro]

Excerpts from "HISTORY AND FORME OF THEURGIC RELICS", a 1798 textbook detailing how magic (in technical: meur) is converted into a form usable by man.

This book was published during the Second Vesturian Civil War.

PAGE 213

Take for example the dragon, a once-plentiful creature. There are many intact skeletal remains of dragons below the ice of the Endless Wasteland. Northern Miners exhume these remains and separate out the pieces capable of generating magic (from here called "meurian artefacts").

The dragon in life generated red meur in its' chest cavity, summoning fire to burn its foes. The usable meurian artefacts are the thoracic vertebrae and ribs. These are sent southward to the Middle and Southern Kingdoms for processing.

A meurian artefact can be paired with an an Andimeur Synthesizer in a process aptly called "synthesis". The meur from the artefact then may be channeled in a way usable by humans.

These completed objects are called  theurgic relics. Those with noble blood have the ability to handle and utilize theurgic relics for a variety of applications.

An ever-burning lamp is a common decorative relic among the elite - they are cheap to manufacture and require only the smallest artefacts to keep a brilliant flame.

FIG 11.a: Fossil remains of a dragon. Red meur can be detected in its' ribcage, where it used meur to generate fire as a defensive tactic.

FIG 11.b: Usable pieces extracted from the skeleton: "meurian artefacts".

FIG 12.a: A simple Andimeur Synthesizer, attached to a dragon's rib bone.

FIG 12.b: Early decorative ever-burning lamp of Southern Kingdom make, circa 1632.

PAGE 302

The most potent of artefacts, such as the thoracic vertebrae of the dragon, are best used in weaponry. Theurgic relics that are weapons are versatile. A skilled wielder of meur may just as easily heat a pan with their theurgic weapon as burn a foe.

FIG 30.a: A brass knuckle fashioned out of dragon vertebrae. A small and efficient Andimeur Synthesizer resides in the grip.

FIG 30.bcd: The red meur may be synthesized in many ways: projected fire, conductive heat, or ambient heat are just some of the ways it may be channeled.

PAGE 315

The greatest and most impressive theurgic weapons are made with the rarest of meurian animals. A principal examples is the unicorn staff, owned by the Andimeur family. It uses a horn from the exceedingly rare unicorn as a conductive weapon that can synthesize any meur type. There is only one known unicorn horn in existence.

FIG 30: An eclectic combination: a commoner’s weapon, the Duruger M1875, retrofitted into a black meur theurgic weapon using hare teeth.

FIG 31: The Andimeur's unicorn staff, pictured with sheath. It can be used as a walking cane when sheathed.

FIG 32: The Andimeur's other family theurgic weapon - the manticore rapier. The tail generates devastatingly hot red meur. The Andimeurs once kept and used manticores for hunting unicorns.

FIG 33: A scythe fashioned from the jawbone of a "demon", a green meur creature remembered for its habit of pilfering human corpses. This particular theurgic relic is utilized by famous Lieutenant General D'Angelo Barghur. Green meur can be dispersed into fields to boost crop yield, as well as used in combat to manipulate the earth, or cause weaponized overgrowth.

[triptychgrip]

Now complete: The Katsuki-Nikiforovs Take Vanity Fair's Lie Detector Test

My story covering Yuuri and Viktor's appearance on Vanity Fair's Lie Detector Game series -- with Yurio, Phichit, and Otabek tagging along -- is now complete! Read the second chapter (covering Yuuri's turn in the hot seat, from Viktor's POV) here. Be prepared for some major feels along with the laughs.

Below is an excerpt that I hope piques your interest in this story, or my other Yuri!!! on Ice work:

----

“As we’ve shared with our fans more and more candidly over the years, I was rather shameless in the early part of our courtship.”

He let his lips quirk at Phichit and Otabek’s slightly muffled laughter, and Yuuri’s cautious smile.

“Your ‘Yuuri on Ice’ Free Program is a very taxing one, and right after the first training session during which I joined you for successive run-throughs of it – with the full jump layout in addition to max difficulty on the step and choreo sequences – I made a big show of collapsing right outside the entrance to Yu-topia. I then begged for you to help me up the stairs to my room. You were so attentive and sweet that, naturally, I couldn’t resist the temptation to milk this opportunity in the following weeks.”

With only a brief flicker of guilt (what else was he supposed to have done?! Desperate times, as they say…), Viktor kept his eyes glued to the page and continued reading.

“At strategic points over the next month or two, I may have played up my fatigue, or orchestrated a few sympathy-induced falls when feeling particularly touch-starved. However, there were a few hints that cropped up now and then to suggest that you knew about my deception. And yet, you appeared to have no problem indulging me, anyway, practically carrying me every time that I whined about my pitiful stamina, or my achy knees.”

He looked up. Yuuri’s cheeks were charmingly pink, and Viktor’s fingers itched to poke at them.

“So, that being said, anata: did you know about my little charade, back then?” he asked, already aware of the answer but eager to see his love’s reaction, nonetheless. “And if so, why did you let it continue?”

Yuuri began to scratch the back of his neck, his flush growing even rosier.

Viktor nearly cooed.

How was he so cute?!

Even after over two years of marriage and four-and-a-half as a couple, Yuuri still grew adorably embarrassed around some of the particulars of their early beginnings.

His spouse gave a tiny cough and kept his gaze affixed to the table they were seated at.

“Maybe not from the very beginning, but eventually? Yes, I knew,” he responded, and from the slight upturn of his lips, Viktor could tell that he was reminiscing. “And you know exactly why: your little scheme started before we officially began dating, so it gave me an excuse to be close to you and to take care of you, for a change.”

Yuuri glanced at him and his face changed, as if he’d suddenly realized what he’d said.

“Not that you had asked to be taken care of, in so many words…but I liked having the roles reversed, so to speak, at least for those brief exchanges,” he went on, without a trace of levity. “You were doing so much for me, and it felt nice to be able to make sure that you were ok, too.”

The subsequent awwww’ing was somewhat drowned out by the way Viktor proceeded to half-stand and envelop him in an eager hug.

He giggled at Yuuri’s yelp of surprise.

“My Yuranya is sooo sweet!” he cried, swaying them back and forth. “And I love that you take care of me. You’re very good at it.”

There was a brief pause, but then his embrace was being returned with equal fervor. “I try my best, Viten’ka. You deserve it,” his husband replied, sounding so earnest that it made Viktor’s heart skip a beat.

“Sit down, geezer! That half-standing position can’t be good for your arthritic back!” Yura called out, the caustic words only slightly intruding on his bubble of bliss.

“Careful, Yura!” he challenged, good-naturedly, after breaking out of Yuuri’s hold.

“Off-season or not, I can still put restrictions on your diet at dinner tonight if I want to.”

Viktor allowed himself a smirk when his student seemed properly dejected at the prospect of this threat.

“Ok, so no lies, so far, right Funmi?” he asked, to which she gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.